Melanie & Fred

Beers of the Week

2011-08-03T05:03:00.001+08:00

I'm going to drink each and every one of these that I can...hopefully without having to share ;)

An Amazing Bird Formation

2008-07-08T13:44:00.000+08:00

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=8704649

I believe the link on Yahoo! indicated that this was a flock of Starlings. I just find it remarkable how they move around like some kind of amalgam jellyfish! Nature is just wild!

Peer Gynt in Wonderland

2008-04-05T12:32:00.024+08:00

As the result of our recent trip to Australia (more on that later), Melanie and I decided to pursue our renewed interest in attending symphony orchestra performances by checking into what sort of concerts were available here in Taiwan.

It was thus that we went over to the National Concert Hall here in Taipei on April 5, 2008 to see what we had expected to be a traditional interpretation of Peer Gynt. That was our first mistake.

For those of you that may not be familiar with Peer Gynt, odds are that while you might not know why this name should sound familiar to you, there is a very good chance that you know many of the songs from this symphony. Especially for those of you who grew up watching the old Warner Brothers cartoons (like Bugs Bunny, etc.), songs such as Morning Mood and In The Hall Of The Mountain King will most certainly ring a bell within the first few bars.

In preparation for this concert, both Melanie and I did a little bit of research online to learn more about the story. The idea of an anti-hero and trolls and belly dancers was all very intriguing, so we were both full of anticipation.

Anyway, getting back to our experience here in Taipei...

To start it all off, we (I) began to suspect that the evening would not go as planned when, as we approached the concert hall, we noticed a distinctly high concentration of children being accompanied by their parents. Melanie later admitted after the show that she had an inkling of what we were in for when, after she had just purchased the tickets from the box office (where, she insists I add, Chinese was exclusively written and spoken), she noticed the word "Choreographer" in the credits of an advertisement as she was heading back home.

For me, I would have to say that things were more clear when we went in and saw that it was pretty much mostly children, running and screaming through the aisles, jumping up and down on the chairs, and staring at the two of us like we were fresh off the mothership in Roswell ("Look, Ma! Foreigners!!!"). Everything crystallized when the MC came out dressed like a giant red rhinoceros beetle.

I will spare you the details of what I was personally subjected to for the next two hours; however, I will offer a brief stream-of-consciousness rant in an attempt to capture the gestalt of the whole experience.

Kids. Ballet with distinctly Chinese movement forms. Butterflies, Beetles, and Bees. Crazy MC in a Rhinoceros beetle outfit. Absolutely intended for an audience of small children. Moral message at the end that combined a commentary between filial piety and the importance of not being an arrogant braggart with little regard for the concerns of others.

The MC did a great job of engaging the kids and explaining the message. Great approach to getting kids involved in different forms of storytelling, the theater and the symphony. Not so great when you're all dressed up for a night of "Serious Music", as the Hungarians would say.

It was surreal watching wings and antennae fall off. Initially tried blocking out the dancers, but the sounds of their footfalls during their leaps and prances ruined any possibility of success there.

So, there you have it. Our night of culture. Next time, perhaps we (Melanie) will do a little (lot) more research before we do something similar. In hindsight, it was a fun and surreal and enjoyable and educational experience that was definitely worth doing once.

Once.

Yeeeeeeeeeeehaw!

2008-01-30T09:18:00.006+08:00

I had a fantastically surreal conversation with one of my colleagues recently.

Just to properly paint the picture here, he is a well educated engineer, currently living with his nuclear family in Shanghai. However, he hails from a village far, far away from Shanghai - both in geography and urbanity - and he often makes me smile with his (at least for me) unique stories and perspectives.

So, my colleague was visiting out Taiwan office from his China office on a business trip, just before Chinese New Year. The team took him out for a nice dinner on one of those nights, and we had an interesting evening of conversation covering topics ranging from travel during Chinese New Year (you've heard the stories) to political party associations (turns out he's a card carrying member of the party) to the US election, etc.

Somehow, and I think this might have been over the third or fourth glass of plum wine, the conversation took a distinctly surreal left turn.

My colleague made the assertion that people that have, at some point in their lives, ridden a dog like a horse will find that it will rain on their wedding day.

That's right - riding a dog will make it rain when you get married.

Dog riding = rain on wedding day

It sounded (and continued to sound) like crazy talk, but then when we went around the table to try and disprove this theory, we soon discovered a direct 1-to-1 correlation. Those of us (that's right - I said "us" - I was 8 years old, so back off) that had ridden a dog at some point in our lives did have rain on our wedding days, and those that had not found the air dry when they uttered their I Do's.

I have since asked several people the two questions that just don't seem to go together, and have continued to come up against the fact that the correlation has remained defiantly present and unimpeachable. It's not even that the people that I have asked have exclusively stayed off the backs of dogs - you would really be surprised how many people have tried it when they were young.

So, in an effort to gather more data in a scientific manner, I have decided to put this survey to you (my audience of 2) to see if you can help me shed any further light on this topic...

RESOLVED: Riding dogs is tantamount to doing a rain dance.

Please use the voting feature on the side-bar to help me to either prove or disprove this theory. Feel free to encourage any other folks you might know to also fill out this survey, and feel free to leave any comments or anecdotes that might help us figure this crazy situation out.

If You Can't Laugh At Yourself...

2008-01-10T11:30:00.000+08:00

I always appreciate it when people have a good sense of humor. This video was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, and it really cracked me up.

Johnny Chung Lee Creates "Minority Report" Effect with Wii Remote

2007-12-27T16:02:00.000+08:00

So this is pretty neat.

Since I work at a company that makes input devices, this does make me wonder if we'd better think about trying to hire this guy...

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

Further proof of job openings for Copy Editors in Taiwan

2007-10-30T11:34:00.000+08:00

This motorcycle has a license plate that few in the US would feel comfortable displaying

Don't we usually try to AVOID passengers that are ticking???

See what happens when you just do a word-for-word translation?

I know you are, but what am I?

My parents read this, so I'll exclude the comment I originally had in mind...

Come on!

2007-08-31T22:49:00.001+08:00

It's hard enough to fight the stereotype of the stupid, fat, ugly American. It's nice to see that Miss Teen South Caroline decided to join the battle...

...she just chose the wrong side...

Seriously, WTF is she saying?

Songs from the 90s

2007-08-27T18:12:00.000+08:00

Actually, this is more wacky stuff spotted here in Taiwan, but I've managed to observe a theme on this one, so here goes:

Found this one in one of the local stores that carries pet goods.

You can...
...in the morning, you can...

...in the night, you can...

...when you want to...

...

I was kind of thinking about the theme from "The Love Boat", but somehow cheezy 70s disco music rings more true...

I'm not sure what they are implying here, but I do know that there's know way I'm drinking this...

Are You Ready For Prayer Time?

2007-08-27T16:07:00.002+08:00

Many (if not most) companies in Taiwan will engage in a semi-monthly "bai bai" ceremony, wherein they sacrifice food, incense and money (actually just paper) to their ancestors to bring fortune and luck. I have yet to really figure out the exact significance of this rite (and admittedly, I haven't really tried), but I think that the ancestor worship is some sort of a cross between Taoism and Confucianist beliefs.

Our office typically does not show many signs of having these sorts of religious/spiritual beliefs, so it was interesting when I noticed my coworkers preparing for this particular holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival. I consider it a privelege to have been able to witness one of these ceremonies first-hand outside of the usual temple environs.

Talented Street Performer

2007-08-24T08:38:00.001+08:00

Check this guy out:

Very impressive style and technique.

He reminds me of Stanley Jordan.

Mexican Food in Taiwan

2007-08-23T12:39:00.001+08:00

Bean-o-rama's recent post on Mexican food has inspired me to put on this ol' blog with regards to Mexican food in Taiwan.

I'm not sure how to start this, so let's start with a silly scenario.

Let's say that you come to Taiwan and decide that rather than partaking of any of the local cuisines (spanning all of Asia with admirable verisimilitude), you instead opt for getting some Mexican food to avoid the dysentery. You might be curious about how they interpret a burrito. You might be wondering how a culture that only peripherally socializes with cheese would go about making an enchilada plate. You might just hate Asian food.

Regardless of your reasons, I am here today to tell you that you should not under any circumstances follow this urge to try Mexican food here in Taiwan. I am sure there are exceptions to this rule (i.e. you have a friend that makes it at home), but I have yet to actually encounter any. Here are some examples of experiences that I have had:

There is a very nice restaurant that also doubles as a jazz club here in Taipei called Brown Sugar. It is very snazzy, the jazz is actually pretty darn good, and the drink menu is downright spectacular. The food menu is also pretty interesting, and they somehow manage to do a great job on their Western fare. In spite of all of these things that they have going for them, their version of Nachos (which costs about US$7~8) was a basket of Nacho Cheese Doritos served with a little bowl filled with crappy picante sauce. Seriously.
I can't recall the place where I had this, but at one point I ended up seeing somebody order a taco that consisted of a fried shell, corn, mayonnaise, and what appeared to be Campbell's Chunky Beef Stew. Not a single shred of lettuce, tomato, pineapple, or salsa in sight...
This isn't really an example of issues with Mexican cuisine, but I also once received a Mojito that consisted of nothing but rum, peppermint schnapps and ice cubes.

There are other examples, but suffice it to say that I have completely given up. Now and then, I might run across a Churro that's probably safe, but I'm even a bit scared to try those out.

I used to complain a bit about the fact that there was no good Mexican food in central Texas - only Tex-Mex. Now that I've had Tai-Mex, I have learned that there are far worse things in this world than black beans served with my fajitas.

Talk About an Understatement

2007-08-21T00:19:00.000+08:00

A China Airlines flight exploded on the tarmac today, with no injuries or fatalities. Here is the article from Yahoo! News.

While this in and of itself is not particularly exceptional, the statement from the President of China Airlines (a Taiwanese company) was just a little bit unsettling:

"We are prepared to do its best to get to the bottom of this incident," China Airlines president Zhao Guoshi told reporters at a press conference at Naha airport late Monday. "I apologize for the trouble we have caused our passengers."

For those of you that have wondered why I am so adamant about not flying China Airlines for my various Asian business trips, hopefully the stats towards the bottom of the above article will shed some light on my position...

Greece 2007

2007-08-20T15:49:00.005+08:00

Monday
Arrived in Athens at 4pm, took the Metro from the train over to our hotel (Evangelismos), walked 3 blocks over and checked into the Athens Hilton (thank you Hilton Honors Points!), where we had a direct view of the Parthenon from our balcony.

After freshening up, we headed up via funicular to the restaurant with the coolest view in Athens, perched atop Lycabettus hill. The restaurant’s food was pretty good (this is where we first discovered Greek wine – their whites are lovely!), but the view was outstanding! Take a thin sweater if you go in the evening (better view then) because it does get drafty.

Tuesday
Woke up early and started walking eastward towards the Acropolis. We just wandered without paying too much attention to the map, so we ended up in a couple cool neighborhoods (Syntagma, Kolonaki, etc.) that had charming tabernas (restaurants) and coffee shops and wine bars.

We eventually figured out that we were going SW, which was cool because we ended up right next to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which is a major attraction. It’s a little worse for wear, but you can still imagine what it must have looked like thousands of years ago. TIP: Buy the all-inclusive entrance ticket, which is good for a week, and will get you into all the major attractions.

We ended up walking in to the Plaka pedestrian area, which is cool for souvenir shopping (at tourist prices, of course) and eating and we decided to have lunch here (gyro…mmmmm). With our bellies full and our fluids replenished, we made our way to the Acropolis.

Plan to spend about 3-4 hours wandering around here if you’re a culture/history buff. Also do your best to get here earlier in the day than we did, since it gets pretty full with tourists over the course of the day, and it gets pretty hot around mid-day. Also, bring good walking shoes as you’ll do quite a bit of climbing up steep walkways to get up to the top of the hill.

We started out at the Temple of Dionysus, wandered through it all up to the Parthenon proper, and then came back down through Ancient Agora, stopping for pictures at the Temple of Hephaestus. TIP: Don’t wander alone through the trees in the Areopagus area – we did and accidentally interrupted a pot deal…cannabis baggie exposed, replete in all its glory.

Afterward, we were all cultured out, so we made a half-hearted attempt at walking through the Roman Agora before giving up and heading off to dinner in Monastiraki. We ended our day wandering back through the shops in Plaka before heading over to the Metro station and going home around 11pm.

Wednesday

We woke up fairly late (and dehydrated), so we headed straight for the National Archeological Museum and had breakfast around there.

Sadly, we only had about 2-3 hours there since we’re both museum buffs and there was SOOOOOOO much to see. If you’re into lots of artifacts from the ancient world, and enjoy reading the placards, then I suggest planning a full day here…otherwise, it is possible to rush through in 2~3 hours, although I would not recommend it. High points here were…well…legion. Seriously, you NEED to go here.

We unfortunately ran out of time, and had to run back to our hotel to get our bags so that we could take the Metro over to the Piraeus pier to grab our boat. We upgraded to business class (cuz I felt like it, darn it) and enjoyed the 5 hour ride out to Santorini. You can get there a lot quicker by plane, but I’ve always wanted to take a boat through the Aegean, so we went for it. The boat left on time, but somehow arrived a couple hours late. Also, the Aegean is named after the waves propensity to jump like goats, so that should give you an idea of what to expect of the ride. We arrived at the pier in Fira (AKA Thira), where our pre-arranged ride for the cave hotel was waiting for us.

Not sure if you’ve ever been to Santorini before, but the cave hotels are basically hotels that are built into the sides of the cliffs overlooking the relatively inactive volcano crater (caldera). The views are spectacular, and the sunsets will stay with you forever.

They’re a little on the pricey side, but I think they’re totally worth it. Our hotel was the Regina Mare, which was pretty decent and had great service. I wouldn’t expect more than 3.5 stars at any of these caldera hotels, but they nearly get by on charm alone.

We ended up going with Imerovigli, which is half way between the two major towns on the island (Fira and Oia). We chose it because it is fairly close to both, but not nearly as touristy and much quieter – you can actually hear the waves at night as opposed to the various boatloads (literally) of people coming and going from the major cities.

If you’re looking for nightlife, then you might want to stay at Fira. If you’re looking for more rustic charm and more restaurants, stay at Oia. If you’re looking for peace and beauty, stay at Imerovigli.

For dinner, we headed over to a local restaurant (take that with a grain of salt) that was pretty close to the hotel. The food was great and the local Santorini wine was fantastic.

Thursday

We just basically wandered around Fira and enjoyed the general ambience of the place. We enjoyed various meals at various places (can’t recall them off the top of my head) and then went home and called it a night.

Friday

We decided to rent a car and head out to explore the beaches. Renting the car was a good move since the bus and taxi systems are unreliable and sporadic at best (apparently pretty typical for Greece). Looking for the beaches…well…let’s put it this way. If you’re expecting broad sandy beaches with warm waves of blue water washing over you, at least you’ll be happy that it’s blue. Santorini was formed through volcanic activity, and its original round shape was devastated a long, long time ago, resulting in its current crescent + point shape today.

This resulted in the formation of spectacular landscapes and beautiful cliffs, coastlines, and beaches. The bad news is that the beaches are all made of stone. The Black Beach has scorching hot black stones. The Red Beach requires navigation across the cliffs of insanity, and the White Beach requires an off-roading experience to reach. The waters are all crystal clear since there is no sand to be seen anywhere. The waters are also very, very cold for some inexplicable reason.
I got a kick out of the drive and the adventure of getting around. It was cool passing through the vineyards full of lazy grapevines (they sprawl on the ground, vines akimbo vs. having posts to follow) – try to make some time for a winery if time permits. We also accidentally ended up driving up an insane mountain towards a place called Ancient Thira – the roads are 1 to 1.5 lanes wide, which makes it extra fun when you’re trying to get around the vans containing tourists. I’d advise against going here unless you like literally living on the edge.

After spending the day in search of and ultimately hanging out at a beach, we headed home to watch an amazing sunset from our terrace, freshen up, drop off the rental car, and then we headed up to Oia for dinner at what is purported to be the best restaurant on the island. This was GLORIOUS – words cannot describe how good this was. It was pretty darn expensive, but it was also our last night in Greece, so we just went for it. You also NEED to go here if you visit. Afterward, we staggered back home (after waiting 45 minutes for a taxi to show up) and finished packing before we crashed for the night.

Saturday
Woke up at around 4:30am and had a tiny little bit of breakfast on our terrace (we were too full to eat it all, but the hotel had packed us a nice breakfast the night before and left it in our room). We cleared out of the hotel and headed to the airport and managed to catch the sunrise over the east coast. Our flight took off at 6:30am, and thus ended a great (albeit far too short) vacation in Greece.

Typhoon Sepat Hits Taiwan

2007-08-20T08:31:00.000+08:00

Melanie was treated to her very first typhoon (also known as hurricane or cyclone) last weekend when Sepat slammed Taiwan with 100+ MPH winds and rain. This is the third such typhoon to hit Taiwan in the last month, but thankfully Taiwan is well equipped to handle these sorts of events, as you can see in this article on Yahoo.

I went downstairs to the front of our building and managed to capture a short video showing the winds and rain hammering our neighborhood. Note that this was during a relatively quiet time during the storm...

The picture above is taken in front of my office on the following Monday - as you can see, aside from the fallen palm, there really wasn't a whole lot of damage.

Thankfully, the storm only lingered for about a day. We had plenty of warning so we rented a bunch of videos, stocked up our pantry with water and instant noodles, and settled down for a weekend at home. In the end, we didn't even lose power, so it was hardly very exciting at all. The worst we experienced was that the windows creaked a bit as they withstood the tempest, and a little bit of water leaked into the ceiling of our little terrace. All in all, considering the recent news of the conditions in India, we got off extremely easy.

Great Drawing

2007-07-30T12:01:00.000+08:00

I just thought this was pretty cool:

http://www.emagi.co.uk/2006/08/12/bush-vampire/

English Lessons for Markus

2007-07-27T08:39:00.000+08:00

Melanie and I were having dinner with her family in Großaspach, Germany. Her youngest cousin is relatively close to our age group, and he is a blast to hang around, so we were spending most of our time talking to him. At this point, my German language skills are decent - since his English skills are also decent, the conversation kind of drifted between German and English.

At one point, he was asking us to teach him English phrases, so we gave him a few useful ones (that I can't remember). I am not sure what triggered it, but I was suddenly taken with the desire to teach him an interesting phrase by first writing it down on a little notepad and having him read the text. The video below is young Markus doing his best to read it:

Puerile - maybe. Hilarious - absolutely!

In China today

2007-07-05T23:01:00.000+08:00

Just wanted to point out how surreal it is here. I was in Beijing yesterday and am visiting our Shanghai office through Saturday. I wish I could more adequately describe the overall impression it leaves on me (this is roughly my tenth visit), but words escape me. I understand nearly everything that's being said around me, and I generally understand the culture, but the overall gestalt of the place is just beyond words.

I'll try to think up some anecdotes to capture this, but I simply felt the need to at least put something down that captures my utter sense of bafflement...it might take a while since I can't even do a Google search to grab a picture that's even remotely related to China...

2007 Dragon Boat Races

2007-06-26T18:21:00.001+08:00

I had a chance to check out the Taipei 2007 Dragon Boat Races down at the river this year. Per Wikipedia, the tradition can be summarized as follows:

The exact origins of Duan Wu originated in ancient China. One traditional view holds that the festival memorializes the Chinese poet Qu Yuan (c. 340 BC-278 BC) of the Warring States Period. He committed suicide by drowning himself in a river because he was disgusted by the corruption of the Chu government. The local people, knowing him to be a good man, decided to throw food into the river to feed the fish so they would not eat Qu Yuan's body.

Naturally, this holiday is not celebrated in modern day China - no doubt the Communist regime had no desire to venerate a day of opposing the government, and summarily did away with the holiday all together.

Taiwan, on the other hand, along with various other countries with ethnic Chinese residents, has a great time with this one in spite of/to spite the mainland. There were attendees and racers from all over the world, including South Africa, the Philippines, the US, etc. Lots of expats also turned out to watch the races despite the 35C (95F) weather.

To be honest, the races weren't nearly as dramatic as I had expected them to be - even the final race was a little anticlimactic. Still, the crowds were friends, the racers and their friends/family were definitely pumped, and the atmosphere was highly enjoyable, so it was worth braving the heat.

I'm going to try something new for this particular post. I brought my camcorder with me for this trip and I figured I'd use the software that came with it to try putting together a little video to capture the day. It's my first attempt, and frankly the software did most of the work, but let me know what you think.

Dramatic chipmunk

2007-06-24T15:58:00.000+08:00

This is just pure genius...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw

This one...not so much

2007-05-14T19:16:00.000+08:00

I just heard today that there is a company selling a product that claims to counteract entropy. Why just rehydrate and replace all those lost electrolytes when you can instead just ingest a few drops of this libation and "create order out of chaos"?

This is either condescension in its purest form or brilliant marketing.

I really, really need to get one of these

2007-05-14T13:47:00.000+08:00

The article at the other end of this link describes a 3D "printer".

I can't even begin to count the number of times where something like this would have come in incredibly handy! Not just for work, but the various broken battery casings and lost bits and pieces that currently force me to do a crappy hack job.

The moment that somebody finds a cheap and effective way to make these devices for the home consumer market, then they will truly take over the world. If nothing else, it will give duct tape a run for its money...

Are Wii Having Fun Yet?

2007-05-11T19:04:00.000+08:00

Alright, so the title is a little cheesy, but what can I say...I'm hooked...

I have heard about the Wii for quite a while now, and by all appearances it is a hit. In particular, the Wii Sports games are the hottest item, specifically the tennis game. I have wanted to try it out for as long as I've known about it, but this has been difficult thus far because (1) Wii is not yet available for sale in Taiwan and (2) when it is eventually released, it will probably be the Japanese version.

At present, the only way to get the Wii is through local importers that buy them in Japan and bring them over for sale in Taiwan. Many of my colleagues have been chomping at the bit for Wii, and thus given the recent delays and shortages, they finally decided to take the plunge and just buy one of these imported models.

It was thus that a Wii appeared in our conference room just after lunch today, along with an extra controller and the Wii Sports game pack. When I found out what was going on, I was suddenly struck with both fear and excitement. I was excited to be able to finally try this sucker out, and afraid that I would like it as much as I thought I might.

Turns out that I was not disappointed on either count...

After about 30 minutes of playing both the tennis game and the boxing game, I consider myself a believer. My arms are tired, and my back is tight, yet I keep finding myself glancing back towards the conference room of temptation. I have boatloads of work to do, and yet I still catch my mind drifting back towards getting another crack at the tennis game.

This will sound like crazy talk and thinly veiled justification, but I really think that this will actually help the workplace be more production. All of the boys in the office are naturally hooked as well, but we are all showing self restraint in playing during work hours (thus far). Folks have only gone back to play for a few minutes at a time during their breaks as kind of a reward for cranking through the tasks that they had on their plate. I for one have found myself more focused and efficient because I am motivated to get done so that I can go back and play without too much guilt. Plus, it's a fun group activity, it really (REALLY) is pretty good exercise, and it brings an element of fun into the office that raises morale.

I just hope it does not cause any incidents with folks slacking when they should not be, which I really doubt will be a problem. I'm guessing this will pretty much have the same effect that the foozball table at our headquarters had on the office - good fun during breaks, but generally not an issue.

Would you have done things any differently?

2007-05-08T17:35:00.000+08:00

This story really stokes the imagination:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070507/od_nm/britain_spree_odd_dc_1

The gist of it is that a man was diagnosed with terminal cancer about 2 years ago and told he only had a year to live, so he went on a spending spree and lived like there was no tomorrow...

...Then he was told that he was misdiagnosed, and that there would in fact be a tomorrow. The tumor turned out to just be a swelling on his pancreas...

I am not sure if I would have done things any differently had I been in his situation...it's certainly interesting to noodle on.

It's dishwasher safe

2007-05-02T16:11:00.000+08:00

They had me at Safe-T-Floss...

http://www.turdtwister.com

Pirates of the North China Seas

2007-04-19T00:15:00.000+08:00

Holee crap!!!

From Slashdot:

"Whilst Microsoft was bragging about the sales number of their latest OS Windows Vista, few would actually know that they have only managed to sell 244 copies in the whole of China in the first 2 weeks. You heard that right, and that's the number quoted from the headquarters of the Windows Vista chief (90% national volume) distributor in Beijing."

I would have been shocked if they had claimed 2440 copies...this is just ridiculous!

I guess I really shouldn't be surprised since it is possible to buy US$1 DVDs of movies pretty much anywhere in China...

...the day after it comes out in the US...

...often weeks before it even reaches the Chinese movie theaters...

I've actually watched a couple during long business trips to China (cheaper than Blockbuster), and the main difference is that the quality just gets better as the bootlegs improve. Eventually, the DVD starts to near DVD quality until the day that it gets released on DVD, at which point it's pretty much over.

Enterprising capitalists never fail to impress!

Will Ferrell is a genius

2007-04-18T12:25:00.000+08:00

A friend of mine just sent me the link below:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1754070

I find it very refreshing to see somebody this famous doing something this low-budget and hilarious.

Let's welcome another Walker to the world!!!

2007-04-17T11:10:00.000+08:00

The world just got a little brighter last week when it welcomed young master Owen Nicholas Walker to the world. He was born on 4/10/2007, weighing 8 pounds and measuring in at 20.1 inches long!

You can find more pictures here.

Congratulations to Jared and Leah for yet another job well done! We wish all of the Walkers (including little but big Alton) all the best on their newest addition!!!

This just gives me the willies

2007-04-08T17:57:00.000+08:00

The following headline caught my eye:

Japan drafts their own version of robot ethics

I don't know about everybody else, but seeing this sort of news just makes me nervous. It might have to do with the fact that we're quickly gaining on the so-called "not-too-distant future", and such laws are now seeming like an awfully good idea.

I wonder how long it will be before our new robot overlords start to pass their own laws on human ethics.

Wulai Hiking Trip

2007-04-07T22:27:00.000+08:00

Melanie and I went to Wulai this past weekend and spent a few hours wandering around the area. Wulai is a very neat place - nestled up in the mountains to the west of Taipei. There are some gorgeous rivers running through the valleys, and what makes them particularly interesting is that there are natural hot springs coming out of the ground into the river.

Getting there is also relatively convenient: we took the subway to Taipei Main Station, transferred to the line taking us south to XinDian, and then took a 20-30 minute bus ride up to the actual destination - roughly 90 minutes total.

If you are ever visiting us out here, then I would suggest forcing us to get out of bed early and hitting the road for Wulai no later than 10am - just to make sure you have enough time to explore. There is a lot to see, and you probably want to be able to take your time seeing it. It is also a lot of fun to switch between soaking in the tide-pools (man-made, but fairly natural) and hopping into the river proper (clean and relatively warm).

Here on the left, you can see that several families actually make a day out of bringing their beach gear and just having a blast. We were there on a slightly rainy day (as you probably surmised from our attire), and there was still a decent turnout despite the weather. What's neat about it is that the village has also started to capitalize on its touristic value by installing more parking, lots of restaurants, coffeeshops, etc. Also, since you are way up in the mountains close to the river sources, the water really is quite clean. It might smell a bit funky, but that's just because the hot springs are typically either of the calcium-carbonate or sulfur varieties - the latter being the stinky one.

In this picture on the left, you can see one of the places where the spring water is coming out in the middle of the river and moving downstream. This picture was taken just a few hundred meters north of the shore area shown up above. The rain caused the image to come out slightly grainy, but hopefully you can see enough to get a good idea for what this looks like. One of the cooler things about this is the fact that even on a day as relatively warm as the day that we visited, you could still see the steam rising from the surface of the water around the spring. The water is really extremely hot in certain areas - right near some of the sources, people even bring cooking utensils and food to boil in the water.

I'm not sure if there are supposed to be any medicinal qualities associated with this manner of food preparation (probably), but there were certainly a few families engaged in this wacky form of outdoor cooking.

From there, we headed up the path (roughly 1km walk) towards the trolley. There is a little train that will take you up the path if you aren't up for the walk, but Melanie and I decided (perhaps somewhat foolishly) to make the trek on foot. The walk was quite pleasant, but it is all uphill, so it will probably be a little bit trickier than you might imagine - particularly when it starts raining a little harder :)

One of the high points (somewhat literally) of this area is the waterfall, which is reportedly 80m tall. The two pictures shown here do not really communicate the scale of it, but it really is quite impressive. There is a little commercial village up at the top of the trail, directly across from the waterfall, where you can get a great view while purchasing your "authentic" Taiwanese & aboriginal goods. There are also (once again) more places to purchase food and drink, so we decided to have a nice dinner here before heading back down again. There is also a tram that will take you up to the falls proper, but we decided to pass on this since it was getting late, and it was a bit too dark and foggy by then for us to expect a much better view.

Overall, it was a very fun trip. If you're ever out this way, we just might take you...if you're nice to us...

But doesn't this almost defeat the point???

2007-04-03T19:43:00.000+08:00

I just received an offer in my Amazon.com "gold box" that made me wonder if the company that makes this is either clueless or genius when it comes to understanding their target demographic for their product.

Below is an excerpt from the blurb on the Amazon website, presumably with content provided by Taylor:

Experience an easier body fat scale with no bending over or lifting the scale up off the floor to program. The simple, easy-to-detach wireless remote can be held easily in the hands, making programming and reading your body fat and weight readings effortless.

Seriously, if you can't be bothered to bend over or squat to program the scale to check your body fat percentage, then how much could you really care about the reading?

Excellent new Japanese workout program

2007-04-02T11:57:00.000+08:00

I found this and thought it was too incredible to keep to myself.

http://blogs.forbes.com/digitaldownload/2007/03/mr_incredible.html

Lunch with Grandpa

2007-03-17T19:28:00.000+08:00

Melanie and I met with my grandfather for lunch again, this time at a restaurant in Ximen.

The restaurant was down in the basement of a department store, down in the B1 food court. It was very delicious and affordable - mainly serving Beiping-style (Northern Chinese) cuisine. This includes great stuff like Dao Xiao Mien (knife-cut noodles) in a delicious beef broth, Xiao Long Bao (steamed dumplings), etc.

It was great to see my grandfather again. It had been a few months since we last had a chance to get together - mainly because we live on opposite sides of Taipei, and neither of us actually drives here. We did not have a chance to spend a whole lot of time together because he was a little tired due to the trek from where he lives over to Ximen, but it was still fun to get to hang out and chat for a while.

Beer Dispensing Machine

2007-03-05T13:06:00.000+08:00

This is a little gem that I just wanted to share with everybody - the Incredible Beer Dispensing Machine!

The first time I saw this was during a layover en route to Asia. The United Red Carpet Club in the Tokyo-Narita airport had a few of these sitting next to the soft drink and coffee dispensers. At first, I wasn't sure about exactly what it was I was looking at. I stood there and stared at this machine for a good 30 seconds before a fellow traveller walked up next to me, pulled a frozen glass out of the freezer next to the machine, loaded it up and pushed the beer button.

At this point, I heard the heavenly chorus, cherubs descended sprinkling laurels and rose petals, and a bright spotlight came on from up above. I had just witnessed my first automatic beer machine!!!

The way it works is simple:

Place the chilled glass onto the small stand
Press the button with the beer icon
The machine tilts the stand at a 30 degree angle and starts to pour in the beer
When it is 4/5 full, the machine then tilts the stand back to the starting position and pours in ~1.5 inches of head
Remove the beer from the stand
Enjoy a perfectly poured frosty Japanese beer

There really isn't any better way to pass the time in an airport...

I love this shirt

2007-02-27T15:27:00.000+08:00

Not much to say here except to reiterate how much I enjoy wearing this t-shirt, and that this picture was taken on the grounds of Humayun's Tomb.

India - Udaipur's City Palace, Spice Market and Train Ride

2007-02-23T23:59:00.000+08:00

Today is our last day in Udaipur – real pity.

We managed to crawl out of bed in time to watch the sun rise over the lake at 6:45am, and it was nearly as beautiful as the sunset we had seen the previous evening.

We then went for breakfast at one of the smaller local hotels, and decided to try some of the Indian omelets that we’ve seen so many people raving about online. I’m not sure if it was this hotel’s take on them, or if people just have really low standards for omelets, but I have to say that it was rather boring and unimpressive...not bad, just not particularly good.

The restaurant was on the rooftop of a hotel up on a hill, so we did manage to enjoy a very nice view of the city and the lakes, which certainly enhanced the meal. We even managed to catch sight of a woman making chapati on her terrace. There were even a few kids dancing to the radio a couple rooftops away - very cute.

After that, Doulet took us to the City Palace complex, where we wandered around for about 2.5 hours. I have to be honest here and confess that it was not terribly impressive. In particular, given all that I had heard about the decadence and splendor of the Rajput kings, I had really expected to see…more... The primary points of interest are found within the palace complex, which has been progressively built upon over the years by various generations of Maharanas.

After Independence in 1947 (see also Midnight's Children), the former aristocracy found that they no longer had the cash flow to maintain their lavish palaces. While many royals decided to sell off some of their holdings and move into middle class Rajasthan life, many others cleverly decided to convert parts of their palaces into more lucrative assets. One can now find many of these converted into museums and “Palace” or “Heritage” Hotels, and perhaps even have an audience with the local Maharaja (or Maharana in Udaipur). While they have literally sold out, it makes sense since all they were able to keep from back when they were kings were their palaces – might as well make some money and promote your family’s greatness.

Incidentally, nearly all of the art depicted scenes from the Udaipur royal family’s history…some bloody, the rest mainly boring. We did see more monkeys, which were probably among the high points of the tour. There were some pretty interesting rooms, courtyards, and even what appeared to be the precursor to the modern discothèque. Still, we ended up moving through this fairly quickly due to a general lack of interesting things at which to look.

From there, we went and had Thali for lunch. This was a great all veg style of meal where it’s basically all-you-can-eat, except there are only a few things to eat, and practically no choices aside from the 7-8 things that they bring to the table. The good news is that pretty much all of the food they bring is tasty. This was quite a bit of fun, and we quickly stuffed ourselves on the things they brought over. Great experience. Great food. Super-cheap. We’ll probably be doing this again if we run across Thali elsewhere.

Doulet then brought us over to a tribal art cooperative on the outskirts of Udaipur. There we found a bunch of neat stuff – wacky rugs, wall hangings, shawls, bed covers, etc. While there, we bought many, many things, and in all honesty, we will probably end up keeping about ¼ of it. Not proud, but that’s just the way it is.

Soon after, we went over to the spice market, which is as far as we could tell frequented only by locals. This place was amazing, with all sorts of sights and sounds and colors and smells - oh the smells. Everything was colorful, and we marveled over the bowls with the spices stacked high and proud. While here, we bought some crazy cool canvas shopping bags which had various India-specific scenes (a seated Ganesha, Krishna looking like a rock star, ‘om’, etc.).

Doulet then took us to the place where he preferred to get his real local "masala chai", which was right in the middle of the market area. There was also a significantly sized fruit and vegetable market where local farmers plied their wares to local citizens. Not as convenient as a supermarket, but the food is fresher, and the farmers get a bigger cut. We saw all sorts of vegetables that looked related to those that we've seen elsewhere, but they were all somehow different in their own way.

We also managed to pick up about 1.5 pounds of Indian tea, as well as the masala (spices) that magically transform it into Chai. We drank some local chai, which is as delicious as it is sketchy. We could not help but notice the (sadly consistent) presence of blotches and stains on the cloth that he used to filter the chai, but we figured we have already had all of our shots and what happens, happens.

When we strolled back to the auto rickshaw, we also bought some very potent cardamom pods, that will serve as a vital link between future memories and present experiences. We truly had a rewarding experience overall just seeing how Udaipur residents live and interact.

Afterward, Doulet took us to see the sunset over yet another lake. Again, it was spectacular.

From there, we went and bought a cheap suitcase in which to place all of our local purchases, and then headed over to a cheaper art school where this time we actually bought a few items – again, souvenirs as well as gifts.

At that point, it was getting close to departure time, so Doulet dropped us off at the hotel so that we could wrap up our packing. When we finished packing, a young German couple (students from Dresden named Klementine and Bernd) showed looking for a room (cheap) for the night… we chatted with then for a while before or took off. Since they had another couple days in Udaipur, we introduced them to Doulet. We then took some time to write in Doulet’s recommendations book. What we missed was his request that we fill in his book as we packed and then leave whatever payment we consider as fair for the previous 3 days worth of pickups, drop-offs, advice, conversation, and general super-guide activities.

From there, we headed to the train station with our entire newly enhanced luggage in a rickshaw (good times). Doulet made sure we were set up and then started to leave. I stopped him stating that we had not paid yet, and that was when he explained his request for us to pay via the book. This made it a wee bit awkward, but we then got it and had to hand him some cash. Sigh…

We plan to keep in touch with him (doulatkalra@rediffmail.com). Really, he was a really good guide, and we will definitely recommend him to any friends we have visiting Udaipur and looking for a guide.

We then got onto our train (2A class sleeper) and knuckled down for our ~10 hour train ride over to Jaipur. Since we did not feel comfortable with both of us sleeping at the same time, Melanie slept first, which has left me some time to read a little and then spend a few hours updating this somewhat. Given that this whole journal is becoming increasingly less interesting to even me, I think it’s time to wrap up for the night and wake Melanie up for her turn to stay up and listen to the symphony of apnea and flatulence that has been going on all night long. I’m glad I have my allergies to sustain me, but I confess to feeling particularly bad for the rest of family in the larger Dutch sleeper oven across the aisle.

India - Udaipur’s Royal Cenotaphs and Boat Ride

2007-02-22T22:45:00.000+08:00

We woke up fairly early and tried to get in touch with travel desk person to see about changing our tickets to delay our departure from Udaipur, but it just seemed as though it would be too much of a hassle to change everything downstream (i.e. train tickets, hotels, flights, etc.). We did still try since Udaipur was turning out so much better than we had initially anticipate, but it was not looking very good...so, we went downstairs at 9am to meet with Doulet, who took us for breakfast at Café Edelweiss.

Quick Digression:
Along the way, Doulet told us that one of Udaipur's claims to fame is that it was the setting for a significant portion of the James Bond movie, Octopussy. It was the eponymous Bond girl's island in the movie. Many enterprising hotel owners and merchants around town show the movie a few times a day on little movie screens or large TVs to tourists curious about exactly where it turns up. Melanie and I ended up passing on the movie, but got a kick out of the whole situation.

Café Edelweiss is a German bakery that was highly recommended in most our guidebooks (they're even top of the list of the Udaipur travel guide on Wikipedia). While my personal preference would have been for a traditional India breakfast, I didn't want to be high maintanence, so we just ended up dining there. If you do ever find yourself in Udaipur at this particular restuarant, my advice is that you don't get the marble cake (which was dry and flavorless) and instead get the cashew nut crumb cake - very unique and quite delicious.

We also got a kick out of the fact that all of the patrons of the tiny restaurant were tourists, and between the two of us, Melanie and I could understand every conversation going on around us. There was a Swiss family, an Austrian couple, a French family, a Chinese couple from Taiwan, and also some English travelers. Oddly enough, there was only one American there.

After breakfast, we went to visit the cenotaphs (memorial sites) for all of the Udaipur Maharanas (other former kingdoms had Maharajas, but Udaipur was different). Doulet gave us a very good explanation of many things, including Satis, city naming conventions, different aspects of Udaipur and Hindi, etc.

We spent quite a bit of time walking around the various cenotaphs. Doulet had quite a bit of information on whom the various structures were constructed for (all of them were Maharanas - some were greater than others). Size usually gave a good indication of what the sons (who were responsible for building and paying for the cenotaphs) thought of their fathers.

Going back to the Satis, we also came across various tombs for the mothers of kings. These were special because they usually represented the now outlawed practice of the Sati ritual, which basically involves the wife (or wives - all of them) setting themselves on fire at their husband's funeral pyre. Apparently life as a widow was a very terrible one that involves being ostracized by general society and waiting for death. Going the Sati route at least offered promise of a beautiful rebirth.

From there, we visited a small Jain temple just across the street. For those that don't remember, Jainism is a very old religion that stresses non-violence to all creatures, and spends all of its money building beautiful temples for worship. It was still being added to even though various parts of the structure already appeared quite old. Many statue/temple fragments (mainly statues) from what appeared to be other ruins were mounted in the outer wall surrounding the Jain temple complex. I must confess that I was a little taken aback when I saw our volunteer tour guide within the premises (who had terrible English skills and wanted to practice with us) swat down a spider (!!!???!!!). The good news is that the spider was still alive after it hit the temple floor. I asked a few minutes later i he was Jain, and he said that he was, so I guess he must be a special sort of Jain.

Afterward, we proceeded to a store that sold Kashmiri shawls, carpets, and other assorted handicrafts. This place had quite a bit of very interesting merchandise…over the course of the time that we spent there, we purchased gifts for my grandmother, grandfather, mother, father and Xiao Ma – Melanie got some nice things for her family as well as herself. We also picked up a nice enamel frame, some cool papier-mâché boxes, and a nice box to store our wedding notes from our guests. After spending 3 hours there, I also made a friend of Ram (our salesperson), who ended up hugging me as we were leaving. I assume this is normal, and that I am not now somehow married to an Udaipuri.

After shopping, we went over to the City Palace to buy our tickets for the boat tour at 5pm. It was only 4pm, so we figured we had enough time to grab a quick late-lunch/early-dinner at a local restaurant called “Honey Dew.” This was a purely “veg” meal and was rather good, but a little on the slow side. Because of this, we ended up being several minutes late (we had mistakenly thought we could catch the 5:30pm boat) and missing our boat altogether.

Fortunately, there were still some boats running, albeit only for tour groups with prior arrangements. After looking sad (which we really were), acting pathetic and asking for help from the attendant, he took pity upon us and approached a tour group about letting us take a couple seats on their chartered boat. There was a very nice French-Canadian guide taking his tour group from Quebec all around India, and he cheerfully welcomed us to join his tour (but only for the boat tour).

It was thus that we had a very nice boat tour of Lake Pichola (the main lake of the seven in Udaipur). It was very peaceful, and we saw one of the most spectacular sunsets I have witnessed in years. Just the way that the sun turned both the clouds and lake surface into an impressionist tableau in that mysterious time between when the shadows all disappear and when the darkness comes.

For what it is worth, I know I'm not terribly poetic, but it really was a singularly amazing experience.

We also saw a ton of monkeys just after we stepped off the boat– nothing terribly earth shaking, but still pretty darn cool. We couldn't take very good pictures of them since it was already a little too dark, but these pictures show the best that we were able to manage.

The monkey is the one on the left (I'm totally gonna get it now)

After that, we went to an art school to look at their “miniature painting” – apparently a specialty of Udaipur. They had some amazing works, although we eventually decided against buying anything due to the high prices. We ended up regretting this later, but that is a story for another day.

The good news was that we did get our luggage back from Jet Airways at the end of the night – nice work, Ashish!

India - Next Stop: Udaipur

2007-02-21T22:00:00.000+08:00

Wednesday morning arrived as expected, but we just weren't ready for it. We woke up a bit later than we had planned and ended up rushing to get ready to leave. We had a nice brunch with Sudhir and Aruna, covering varied topics from checking with the Hyatt about cancelling one night’s stay through chai recipes.

Sudhir personally dropped us off at the airport on Wednesday, check-in, and checking our bags all went smoothly. The domestic airport itself was not terribly impressive – it was fairly small, with unfortunate smelling restrooms and a complete lack of anything grand (rather odd for the Capital); however, it was reasonably smoothly run (not exactly efficient, but still adequate).

Slight digression:
It is always interesting to see how men and women are still treated quite differently in many respects. An excellent example is that security checkpoints (including tourist sites as well as airports) always have two separate lines for the genders. The women’s area is always segregated and covered by a screen, whereas the men are left out in the open.

The flight departed a little late, but this was also not an issue since we were probably no more than 30 minutes behind schedule.

The real issue arose upon our arrival in Udaipur. My luggage came through with a chewed up handle, which is fine since I brought along a relatively old suitcase. Melanie’s suitcase, which is a very young-looking 2.5 years old, came through with one of the wheels nearly ripped clean off the bottom-side of the luggage. When we complained about this, the young lady behind the counter offered me two options (1) let them fix it, although it would take more time than we had planned to spend in Udaipur or (2) accept their compensation of 300 Rupees, which was more than enough to get the bag fixed myself in Udaipur. I gently but firmly disagreed with this for the better part of 20 minutes before I finally insisted that they put me in touch with their manager.

He came out quite shortly and, upon hearing the details of our predicament, promised that he could ensure that our bag would at least be usable prior to our departure on Friday evening and perhaps even more thoroughly fixed-up before we left Jaipur. This sounded far better to us, so we agreed to let him come over to our hotel after his shift was over to personally pick up our luggage and take it over to the repair shop, and make sure that it was finished by Thursday night. More on this later.

Once we had reached this point, Melanie and I finally went outside to meet Doulet (our driver) – fully 1 hour after we had arrived. We started to explain our predicament to the driver, and he was very empathetic and offered support and advice. He then asked how long we planned to stay in Udaipur and upon hearing 2-days; he informed us that this was far too short, and that we would be sad to leave when the time came. We quickly saw why he said this as the many beautiful lakes started to come into view as we approached the city.

Over the course of the 40-minute ride from the airport, it came up that Doulet is also a tour guide, and he offered to take us up the mountain that evening to see the Monsoon Palace – apparently a great place in Udaipur to see sunsets. He seemed to be a fairly low-pressure sort of guy (very important to both Melanie and I after Delhi and Agra) so we figured we would give him a shot with a 2 hour excursion - after we had checked in and freshened up a little from the trip.

As we pulled into the driveway of the hotel, my jaw literally dropped when I finally got my first look at the hotel. Before the trip, I had found and booked the Udai Kothi hotel online after significant amounts of research at various opinion sites as well as the two main guidebooks we used for planning this trip (Frommer’s and Lonely Planet). Still, I somehow still expected the reality of the hotel to somehow not live up to the charming but claustrophobic photos and high praise that we consistently found. We were incredibly pleasantly surprised to see that it was in fact even better than it looked and sounded online.

First off, we were greeted with marigold leis as we arrived in the lobby – always a good sign. Then, we were taken quickly and efficiently up to our room, which turned out to be quite spacious and charming. With its four post covered bed, not one but TWO seated reading windows with views of the lake, and a reasonably sized bathtub! It all looked new and clean enough to make you just want to fall down to your knees and worship your preferred deity upon walking into the room.

After giggling for a while and thanking our lucky elephants, we went back downstairs to interview our guide. We hopped into his auto rickshaw and proceeded to get to know him better. Turns out that he has traveled quite a bit within Europe, spent 10 straight months of his life at the Dalai Lama’s temple in northern India, and was in generally a heckuva person. During the ride up and down the hill, Doulet came across as a very nice, reasonable, well-informed, pretty well connected person, so we made arrangements upon our return to the hotel to meet the following day for a full day’s worth of services.

Oh yeah, and the Monsoon Palace itself was kind of run down and looked more like a neglected Tuscan fixer-upper than what we had imagined, which was more along the lines of the gorgeous Indian monsoon-season getaway for the local King (AKA Maharana). Still, the views and the sunset really were truly beautiful, although we would see even more spectacular ones over the next couple of evenings.

After that, we went back to our hotel, where we had arranged to meet up with Angela and Chris again for a nice dinner at the Udai Kothi rooftop restaurant. Again, we had a very pleasant time with them, so we were sure this time to more carefully exchange contact information and we will most likely be staying in touch once we are all back to our respective homes.

As far as the restaurant was concerned, it was up on the rooftop with a very nice view of the lake. The weather just happened to be perfect while we were there, and the lake was full, so we ended up dining here for both of the nights we stayed, and we really enjoyed the food (although I advise against getting the rasmullah for dessert).

Just to get back to the more disappointing aspect of the day, the Jet Airways regional supervisor (Ashish) was supposed to come by our hotel and pick up our luggage this evening while we were at dinner, but this did not happen that night. This left us just 1.5 days to find a solution whilst avoid getting screwed.

India - The Main Event

2007-02-20T23:59:00.000+08:00

Taj Mahal

We woke up at 5am today and started getting ready for the trip - sunscreen, fully charged all the batteries for the cameras, took care of business before the road-trip, etc. Afterward, we had a quick breakfast with Sudhir where he gave us some advice that might have been intelligible if we were fully conscious, and then hit the road at ~6:30am with his driver Budprakash.

The Taj Mahal (pronounced taj mah-Hel) is located in a city called Agra, which is about 200km SW of Delhi. We had the option of either taking a train or hiring a car. Both require about the same amount of time, and while the train is significantly cheaper for two people (~US$75 difference in price), the car option is far more flexible. Plus, Sudhir had suggested that we also take some time to go visit a place called Fatehpur Sikri, which is about 40km west of Agra, so the car simply made more sense.

I found the drive itself to be very, very interesting in a lot of ways. Since Delhi is the capital of India (with the closest major airport) and Agra contains the most famous site in India, I had somehow expected a more sanitized journey between the two - presuming that an oft-traveled tourist route would somehow be prettied up for foreign consumption. This turned out to be an incredibly stupid supposition.

First off, the region between the two cities is pretty much entirely rural, and its denizens appeared to be either agrarian or impoverished. This was the first major shock that I had on this trip. Along the way, we saw:

People piled high and proud on various modes of automobile
People packed like sardines into an auto rickshaw (basically 10 people in a vehicle that appeared to be designed to carry 3~4)
People traveling via elephant or camel
People sleeping on the side of the road
People squatting by the side of the road

On this last point, I want to go into just a bit more detail. We had initially assumed that the people that we saw squatting by small bodies of stagnant water near the road were simply resting themselves in the wee morning hours. It was only when we saw somebody take advantage of the puddle for sanitary purposes did we realize that they were in fact "dropping the kids off at the pool", so to speak. Once we had undergone this little paradigm shift, it became obvious that most of these people were men, that they were taking care of both numéro un and deux deux, and that there was really no legitimate reason to assume that they would have any better places to do so.

This just pretty much confirmed what I had begun to suspect upon our arrival, which was that this trip to India would be better enjoyed as an adventure than a vacation...particularly when, despite my best efforts, I began to realize that nature was calling for me as well.

But enough with the scatological ramblings, let's get back to the sites and sounds.

About an hour before the Taj Mahal in Sikandra, we passed by an impressive looking structure off to the east, which turned out to be Akbar's Tomb. No, not the one from Life In Hell, but it is spelled the same way. Unfortunately, since we knew that we had a lot of things to do this day, we decided against making an actual stop and instead just drove briefly through the parking lot and took a couple pictures. I would have liked to seen more of this, it just wasn't meant to be. The best that I can offer you is a pretty link to a pretty good PBS website on Akbar's Tomb.

From there, we continued on to Agra proper, finally arriving at around 9:30am. We later found out the reason for this, but the parking lot for all vehicles (tour bus, car, rickshaw, camel) is about 1km away from both the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. Before Budprakash was even able to park the car, we could feel the tension in the air rising as various enterprising transporters started to gather around the car to offer their services. Budprakash had a brief and what appeared to be a somewhat heated conversation with the group, and then indicated that we should just follow him on foot for a ways. He led us to a small dirt path that led to what was presumably the Taj Mahal - at first we were a bit skittish, but we were more worried about the rest of the touts and there were also various other tourist-looking types going the same way, so we decided to just take his advice and hoof it.

What happened next was irritating as hell, but actually pretty funny when I look back on it. We were accosted the entire 1km walk by guides trying their very best to offer us their services (starting price - 450 Rupees, or ~US$10). We tried various tactics to get rid of them (ignoring them, saying no gently, saying no aggressively, ignoring them again, speeding up, slowing down, stopping to take pictures, etc.), and while we were able to shed most of them, one particularly persistent tout simply would not be denied. His price continued to drop every 50 meters or so and eventually, after he had come nearly the full kilometer with us, we agreed that he could be our guide for 20 Rupees. He then proceeded to give us the old bait-and-switch, but this turned out well since this resulted in us getting a good guide named Rahees – still at the same price (20).

Rahees took us to the entrance and started to tell us (with a pretty darn good command of the English language) about the history of the place and the people involved in its construction. He told us about Shah Jahan and the history of the Mughal emperors. He told us about Mumtaz, the other wives, and their children. He told us how one of the sons (Aurengzeb) "got rid" of the others and rose to power, imprisoning his father in the Agra Fort for the last 7 years of his life with only a view of the Taj Mahal so that he could spend the rest of his life "thinking about his mistake". He told us of how prior to this, Shah Jahan had actually planned to build a black twin to the Taj Mahal across the river from the white one, but never got around to it thanks to the Big-Pious-A. He rounded these details out with tidbits about the inlay work in the main structure, explanations about the style of architecture, observations about the 4 towers (they lean away from the main structure so as not to damage it should they fall), and informed us that the reason the building is yellowish instead of its original stark white was due to pollution, causing the Indian government to ban all traffic and factory presence within 1km of the grounds.

While he was telling us all of this, we had the surreal experience of actually walking around a truly amazing place. Nothing that I had seen or read about it really prepared me for the experience of actually being there. The epic sense of beauty, space and symmetry that effuses every molecule of the place was simply breathtaking. Visiting the Taj Mahal has been one of my life's goals, and here I was standing - right in front of it, about to step inside!

As we walked up past the reflecting pools and approached the main structure, we continued to be blown away by the experience of it all. It turns out to be much larger than you would think from the pictures that you come across. It is also far more impressive in person due to all of the fine detail that went into the design. We also happened to luck into a perfect day - clear blue skies and comfortable weather. This was more like it!

Before you can ascend the dais and go into the main structure, it is necessary for all people to remove their shoes. This led to another unexpected aspect of the Taj Mahal that you don't typically read about in travel guides: the smell inside. I can only guess what could cause human feet to reach that level of funklitude, but it hits you like a wall as you cross the threshold and go inside. I can only hope that the memory of the awful/offal smell will fade in time, leaving me with a purer memory of the inside of the place, but for now it remains...

We went back outside, breathed the glorious air again, and then proceeded to walk the grounds a bit. This was also quite fun since the grounds are apparently occupied by monkeys in the early hours of the day and squirrels for the rest of the time the sun is up. We didn't get to see any monkeys, but the squirrels were everywhere. Melanie again went gaga over these cute little critters, which are smaller and admittedly cuter than their American cousins. We also got to see the Taj Mahal version of a lawnmower, which is essentially a spinning scythe with a collection basket pulled behind two cows. The best part is that the process is self sustaining since the cows get to eat the fruit of their labors, which results in fertilizer for the grass. Truly a self-sustaining system.

For the last part of the tour, we stopped off in a gift shop where the supposed descendants of the family that did the original inlay work were still plying their trade for souvenirs. Rahees was obviously on commission, so we stayed long enough for him to get at least a little $$, paid him his 20Rp + a decent tip, and then parted ways - heading back to the car. Again we were accosted by various rickshaw drivers offering us a ride back to the parking lot (price went from 150 Rp down to 5Rp), but we decided to just walk back down the path. We realized at this point that nothing looked familiar since we had flown by it all the first time as we were trying to escape the guide earlier in the day. It was a good thing that we had given Rahees a good tip since he happened to be sitting outside and watching us as we started off in the wrong direction - he called out to us and told us the actual way back, and so we went.

Fatehpur Sikri

Afterward, we headed over to Fatehpur Sikri. The road there is narrow 2-lane road, and it was slightly reminiscent of the car ride over to Batina, Croatia (passing, overtaking, interesting smells) but far more destitute and far more cows. It was similar to the drive down to Agra, except the view was nicer, there were fewer people squatting, and we got to see these bizarrely stacked piles of dung, sometimes up to 2m tall.

If you look up towards the top of the archway, you will see a bunch of very large, fungus looking things. These are actually active beehives. I'm guessing that these are still here because (a) they look fascinating in both their size and shape and (b) there weren't a whole lot of volunteers for this particular clean up duty.

When we arrived, we managed to get a nice enough guide named David. He gave us adequate information, but I think we were still too close to Agra to get truly good service.

While this place was also fascinating, the day was starting to wear us down, so we only stayed a couple of hours, took a few pictures, and then headed on home after a quick pitstop at David's family's gift shop.

I'd like to digress again and rant a bit on the dichotomy that is India. On one hand, this is a country rich in culture, regal majesty, architecture, music, etc. On the other, it is insanley impoverished and underdeveloped: poopers by the side of the road, rail thin people of all ages, a belief in reincarnation, but we often saw people acting with some cruelty to animals, tourists being overwhelmed with people offering trinkets, baubles, guided tours, photographs, etc.

Anyway...

We went back to the Sabharwal residence and had a nice late dinner with Sudhir and Aruna. Sudhir gave us the nicer back bedroom for our last night in Delhi, and he even went so far as to invite us back for a free night at his place during the final leg of our trip before we return to Taiwan! Sudhir and Aruna have become increasingly parental over the course of our time spent here, but I am afraid that after 8 days in India, we will really need to stay in a cushy hotel rather than their home. They are a lovely couple, so this is no slight to them - just a supposition about the way we'll feel in a week.

India - Shopping Day

2007-02-19T19:47:00.000+08:00

We woke up fairly late on Monday, and only staggered out into the common area around 10am. We ended up chatting with Sudhir for a couple hours, and he regaled us with entertaining stories about his family and his reasoning for wanting to rent out rooms (both sons are married and gone, and his daughter is busy getting her MBA). He and Aruna (his wife) helped us work out our itinerary for the day, and he made sure that both Melanie and I were taken care of.

Interestingly, we found out that he owns a 150-store shopping center named after his family on a street that is also named after his family. We mentioned that we wanted to buy the dancing Siva statue, and he told us not to worry about it for now, and that he would take care of us. I also wanted to note that Sudhir and Aruna were already well dressed and obviously ready to head out someplace before we woke (found out later it was 2 weddings on this auspicious day), but they waited for us so that they could get to know us better, as well as help us to plan our day…super nice. The Sabharwals were Definitely not Carol Swift (more on this someday).

We hired his driver for the day, and proceeded to strike out into Delhi to do some shopping. The first place we went was called GK-I, which is a small shopping center that is somehow very well known and apparently a Mecca for visiting white people in India.

First, we had lunch at Zaffrons, which is a great rooftop Indian restaurant. From there, we spent nearly 4 hours in this crazy store called Fabindia. There were 3-4 different branches of Fabindia shops contained in GK-I, each selling different wares. I am not really sure how best to describe it, so I will just say that it seems to carry many fairly high quality textile products manufactured in India. They sell kurtas, shirts, dupattas, shawls, saris, tablecloths, linens, etc., and the stuff is both neat and affordable. I am still not entirely sure how we blew 4 hours there, but we did end up with a whole bunch of neat stuff, both for us as well as presents, so it was definitely worthwhile.

We had just enough time to head over to the Lahore Music House, where I was able to pick up a gorgeous sitar and a set of stunning tablas for a remarkably cheap price. I LOVE THEM. The other cool thing is that Sudhir actually helped us to negotiate (by phone) the rate down by another ~3000 Rupees AFTER I had already gotten as low as I could go. I will post pictures of both at some point in the future. We then did a rather remarkable job loading everything into the Tata Indicar (about the size of a Ford Focus) and headed on back to the Sabharwal household.

On the way back, we saw our first wedding, which was quite an interesting affair. I was not able to get the camera out in time, but we did see several more over the next week, so I will post pictures of some of these a little later.

When we arrived, Sudhir was again waiting for us, this time dressed nicely for what must have been a more western wedding. He hooked us up with SIM card with an Indian mobile number (rented for the week for ~US$11), gave us further details about our upcoming Agra excursion, and gave (that’s right – gave) us the dancing deity statues (apparently called “Nataraj”). I have to say that our host felt more like Uncle Sudhir than Mr. Sabharwal.

We then all headed out, with Melanie and I going to a restaurant called Dumpukht (also at the Sheraton) for our dinner While this was a higher end dining experience, it frankly was not nearly as charming or tasty as Bukhara – still, it was certainly an excellent meal. We were seated by the piano/tabla duet, playing beautiful and evocatively foreign music.

Speaking of foreign, this was also the first time that we experienced what turned out to be a common occurrence in Indian dining - precious metal foil on the food. I am not altogether sure if this is good for me, let alone whether or not it really makes sense to actually eat gold and silver in the first place, but it didn't seem to have any adverse effects. This just goes to show that it's possible to pimp darn near everything these days.

We then went back to the B&B and chatted with Sudhir and Aruna for a little longer before going to bed. They gave us the finer details for our Tuesday trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which really made both of us very excited since we were GOING TO SEE THE FREAKING TAJ MAHAL!!!

India - Further Impressions on the Second Day (Slight Panic)

2007-02-18T23:59:00.000+08:00

We actually managed to sleep quite soundly on the very comfortable bed provided in the guest room by our hosts, the Sabharwals. We eventually managed to crawl out of bed around 10:30am and staggered out of the bedroom around 10:45am. At this point (after we noticed the temple right across the street), we met the other couple staying at the Sabharwal residence – Angela and Chris – a nice young couple from Washington D.C. Sudhir, our very entertaining host introduced us to them and then he and his wife Aruna proceeded to finish discussing their itinerary for the day, which coincidentally enough consisted of many of the same points of interest that we were thinking of visiting.

Just as Angela and Chris went back to their room to finish getting ready for their day out on the town, Sudhir leaned over and hinted that since our agenda was much the same as theirs, that perhaps we should just piggy-back our day onto theirs and go out on the town as a foursome. When they came back to the room, we brought it up and they went for it, so we quickly finished getting ready and set out for a day around Delhi.

It turns out that one of the many services offered by the Sabharwals is a driver that will take you wherever you wish to go over the course of an entire day for about US$40. This turned out to be fantastic since we now had somebody that we could trust taking us directly to our points of interest and then staying with the car (and our stuff) whilst we wandered around.

Our first stop was for lunch at a relatively old restaurant called Karim’s, which happens to be very close to India’s largest mosque – Jamma Masjid. It was here when we first started to get to know our travel companions, as well as started to get to know Indian cuisine. We enjoyed a wonderful mean of Chicken Burra, Butter Chicken, and Palak Paneer, washed down with a glass of Pepsi (not traditional, but a relatively safe option considering what we had heard about drinking the water).

After lunch, we wandered outside and made our way over to Jamma Masjid. This was a very interesting trip in that (a) it was the first time that any of us had ever been to a mosque and (b) the architecture and ambience was very unique. To start, we had to take off our shoes before we were allowed to enter, and we were encouraged to check in our shoes with the young men sitting at the entrance. Although we were a little concerned about the safety of our footwear, there is a strange trust that arises from being in India outside of a mosque, so we went for it. We were also charged a nominal fee of about 200 rupee, but this was quoted in our guides as the standard rate, so we felt we were getting a good deal. From there, we entered the mosque and soak up the ambience.

The mosque had a large courtyard in front of a magnificent structure, inside of which we were not allowed. The courtyard had people sitting about in various states of repose – unusually enough, those that chose to lie down were accosted by what appeared to be guards of some sort sporting wooden sticks, which they used to literally poke those that were lying down. There were also several large bowls towards the center of the courtyard along with a large yellowish area in the very middle of the courtyard. It turns out that the yellowish area was birdseed, which we presumed were there to distract the legion of pigeons that were hanging out on the minarets of the mosque. This was a little disturbing since we were walking around either barefoot or in socks, but we got over that out of necessity.

From there, we proceed to take a rickshaw ride around Old Delhi, which included parts of Chandni Chowk, a remarkably cute and exquisite Jain temple, and the Red Fort. This was a fascinating and scintillating ride, full of near misses with pedestrians, a few shops paying our rickshaw pilots commissions for visiting customers, and a nice leisurely walk around the Red Fort grounds, which were hauntingly similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing. At the end of the three hour tour (a three hour tour), we paid our drivers roughly 500 rupees (300 for the ride and 200 for the tip – a bit of a rip off), we got back into our vehicle and headed over to Akshardham to poke around for a little while.

Akshardham is a ridiculously beautiful example of neo-classical Indian architecture, and a remarkably successful confluence of old Indian culture with modern technology. While I have yet to figure out exactly whom this glorious tribute was built for, I am glad to have visited it – albeit only for about an hour. When we get back to Taiwan, I want to do more research on this place that will inevitably find its way into the top ten lists of the next edition of every single India guidebooks from now on. For a glimpse of what it looks like, I suggest doing an image search under either Google or Yahoo...cameras were not allowed on the site...

From here, we went back to the B&B to freshen up a bit before dinner. It was then that I finally had a chance to start getting to know Sudhir a little better, and I am very grateful for this opportunity. Sudhir is nothing less than a spectacular host. He went out of his way to make sure that we felt comfortable, secure, and well taken care of. He made sure that our restaurant reservations were all in order, automatically pushed out our reservation when it became obvious that we would not be able to make it, ensured that Chris (AKA Eric) and I were sufficiently liquored up before hitting the road, and gave us a bit more information about his family.

From there, we went over to the Maurya Sheraton, located in the Diplomatic Enclave, for dinner at a restaurant called Bukhara. This was a restaurant recommended to me by Sid Agrawal, and also turned out to be a restaurant that Sudhib suggested to his guests when they wanted a fine dining experience.

This place was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! While the ambience left something to be desired (not bad, but nothing interesting), the food was nothing short of life changing. First of all, silverware is not provided, which means that you have no choice but to get at least a little feral and eat with your hands. This is not an issue since all of the food is custom made for this. We ordered the Sikandori Raan, which is a beautifully crusted “whole leg of spring lamb marinated in malt vinegar, cinnamon, and black cumin, first braised in the marinade and then finished in the tandoor”. We also enjoyed an amazing chicken curry dish (murgh something or other) – a dish so delicious that you could coaxed into believing that God (or Allah or Brahma or Buddha) is back in the kitchen. The Paneer Tikka and the butter naan were both good, but just not on the same plane as the other two dishes. We topped it off with an Argentinean Malbec from Terrazas, which just completed the experience. I just cannot say enough good things about this whole dining experience, so I will just leave you with the comment that the food served this evening is easily on my list of the top ten meals I have ever had in my life…

Chris and Angela turned out to be such good company that we have made arrangements to meet them in Udaipur on Wednesday to enjoy at least one more meal before our paths diverge for good (at least on this trip) when they head down to southern India.

That’s about it for Day 2. Melanie and I are both so exhausted from running around all day long (and gorging ourselves on Indian fine dining) that I simply cannot keep my eyes open any longer…

India - Impressions on the first day (Don't Panic)

2007-02-18T20:00:00.000+08:00

Melanie and I both ended up getting waaaaay too little sleep the night before the trip – probably a mix of pre-travel excitement and poor planning on a few final details. In the end, we managed to get our acts together and get out the door pretty much right on time.

We had our friend Eric the Limo Driver take us to the airport. He charges less than a taxi, picks us up in front of our apartment, and drives a brand new Mercedes Benz, so calling him up is a no-brainer. We had initially expected traffic from all of the folks heading down south for their Chinese New Year dinners, but traffic turned out to be pretty sparse, so we go to the airport very quickly. Over the course of the trip, Eric told us about his personal experiences traveling within India, and how he and five of his colleagues all ended up going a few rounds with Kid Dysentery after drinking the water – in one case just a couple drops while brushing his teeth at the Sheraton (still a 5-star here as well). But enough about that for now – while I am hopeful, I am also pragmatic enough to realize that this might not be the last time we talk about this subject.

At this point, we received quite a nice surprise. As we were checking in, we found out that Cathay Pacific was bumping us to Business Class for the Taipei -> Hong Kong leg of the trip. This was great, and we both really enjoyed the service and the seats. I know this might not sound like much of an accomplishment, but they ended up serving the best airplane food I have probably ever had. The salad was the best I have tasted in years, and they even served up a Hungarian dessert wine at the end of the meal.

Obviously, this trip was off to a very strong start.

Reality settled back in for the 6-hour Hong Kong -> Delhi leg of the trip. Somebody sitting near us had supernaturally stinky feet, and took their shoes off shortly after boarding. Somebody else nearby suffered from chronic flatulence. In addition, after sitting in Business Class so recently, the normally cramped Economy Class seats seemed smaller than ever. While the meal was still decent, (I had the lamb curry – Melanie had the veggie dinner) it was hardly memorable and certainly not delicious. By the time we landed in Delhi, I felt like an unfolding accordion as I stood up to gather our luggage…everything just felt tired and sore.

As we arrived in Delhi at just past 3am on February 18, I could not help but notice that the airport was a bit dilapidated and generally unimpressive. This was pretty much what I expected, but it is still startling to realize that we are no longer in a highly industrialized part of the world, and that things really would be different here.

As we walked out into the passenger pickup area around 4am, we were lucky enough to find our driver waiting for us relatively quickly. He took Melanie’s bags and instructed us to follow him outside. At first, I was not sure if I should just blithely trust him, but he seemed an honest bloke (who also happened to be short, older, and skinny) so I figured we would be all right. Within 5 seconds of walking outside, we were exposed to what appeared to be the louts of the country. Young men would walk up to us, point to our driver, and say things like “we are together”, or “I am with him” and try to take our bags. When the third one came up and kept following us for a few dozen meters, our driver turned and said something that sounded like irritated Hindi, and the guy backed off. While I cannot say for sure what would have happened if I had let him “help” me with my luggage, I am fairly certain that it would have been more adventure than I would have wanted during out first few hours in India.

From there, we went to the car (small little number), got in, and started on a 30-minute trek to the bed and breakfast we would be staying out during our first few days in Delhi. The initial impressions in the dark were that Delhi was a city in transition – one moment we were driving down a long dark street in an area that I would normally avoid even in Mexico, and then the next we saw super-highways under construction, and then a few seconds later we saw an elephant “parked” out in front of a set of buildings.

I must confess that thoughts of “what the hell have I gotten us into” crossed my mind more than once as we drove towards what I sincerely hoped would be our planned destination. Within 10 seconds of getting into the car, I pulled out our trusty guidebook, looked up the emergency number for dialing the police (100) and held my cell phone at the ready, just in case my spidey sense started to go off.

In the end, all of my fears appear to have been unfounded. After a slightly harrowing but uneventful trip, we made it to the B&B without issue and were shown into our room. After brushing our teeth with bottled water (hopefully it is still too early for that part of the story to come into play) we started settling down for the night.

As I type this at 5:30am, sitting on the edge of the bed in our guest room, I can hear horns occasionally honking in the background. I can hear sounds of construction and loud little cars with loud little engines zooming by a few blocks away. Probably the coolest thing that I can hear is the unmistakable sounds of people either singing or praying off in the distance. The voices are clear and ululating, and the melody is haunting and beautiful. I look forward to falling asleep to them tonight…

The India Trip

2007-02-17T09:41:00.000+08:00

We have done our best to put together a good itinerary for our 10-day trip to India, which you can view below:

http://travel.yahoo.com/trip-view-968476-india_2007-iid-4500208?msg=PGVtPlJldHVybiBIb21lPC9lbT4gYWRkZWQ-&dbwrite=Y

I plan to keep a journal for the trip, and promise to publish edited highlights upon our return.

I should have known

2007-02-16T13:52:00.000+08:00

Ah yes - it's all becoming quite clear to me now that I have taken both the super hero quiz AND the super villain quiz...

Just like two sides of a coin....

Your results:
You are Superman

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Your results:
You are Lex Luthor

A brilliant businessman on a

quest for world domination and

the self-proclaimed greatest

criminal mind of our time!

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

India!!!!!!

2007-02-13T15:16:00.000+08:00

We are SOOOOOOOOOOOO excited right now because we are in the final stages of planning our trip out to India.

Chinese New Year is coming up on Sunday (2/18/2007), and as a result we will have a nice long holiday during which Taiwan and China are pretty much shut down for a week. On top of that, there is another holiday in Taiwan on 2/28/2007, so by taking just a couple days, we get to spend about 10 days traveling around India!

At this point, we are planning to visit just four cities:

Delhi - Red Fort, Old City, Qutb Complex, etc.

Agra - Taj Mahal, Agra Fort

Udaipur - Lake Pichola, etc.

Jaipur - not entirely sure yet, but lotsa cool stuff

Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur is apparently a very oft frequented tourist route - so much so that it even has a name: The Golden Triangle.

We promise to post lots of pictures from our travels and tell you all about it. The very sincere hope is to have a beautiful but relatively uneventful trip, so wish us luck!!!

ATHF and DHS

2007-02-01T14:15:00.000+08:00

Every once in a while, the world reveals itself for the surreal place that it truly is.

Today was such a time.

Whenever Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the Department of Homeland Security are mentioned in the same sentence, you just know that some higher power somewhere is just screwing with us.

If the house is a rockin'...

2007-01-26T14:44:00.000+08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070125/ap_on_re_as/taiwan_earthquake

This 6.2 is probably the second-biggest earthquake I've had the "pleasure" of experiencing. I was in LA for the Northridge quake back in the mid-90's, and that one was much scarier; however for that shaker, I was on the bottom floor of a 2 story building.

This time around, I was on the 7th floor of a 10 story building in Taipei. On top of that, the office is built near recently reclaimed land, which tends to move and shake a whole lot more than nice solid rock. Good times...

Still, it really wasn't all that bad. While the pucker factor briefly spiked when I realized that it probably wasn't just the caffeine, I found myself settling down to merely nervous as it progressed. Overall, it felt more like a windy train ride than a hardcore earthquake.

I am quite thankful that nobody appears to have been hurt, and I sincerely hope that I never get to experience a big one.

Silly math comic that fascinates me for some reason...

2007-01-25T20:27:00.000+08:00

I can't really say why I like this comic, but it cracks me up somehow.

http://www.xkcd.com/c135.html

Maybe it's because, on some level, I'm convinced that I can solve the problems pretty easily.

Besides, you never know when you'll encounter a raptor.

Another Cheap Knock-Off

2007-01-23T22:35:00.000+08:00

I don't even know what to say about this, except to maybe provide a little background.

So - I presume that everybody knows who Larry King is so I won't bother 'splainin' this part.

What I will point out is that there are certain trademarks to Mr. King's appearance: the suspenders, the rolled-up sleeves the tie. He also has a pretty characteristic set, and certain mannerisms that are readily identifiable as his own.

Given his popularity, credibility, and broad success as a newscaster and interviewer, it is only natural that an aspiring "newsman" would want to emulate him. Rather than imitate his easy manner or non-confrontational interview style, some supplicants at the alter of Mr. Zeiger chose to follow a different route.

I have no idea who this guy is, but he pops up regularly on our TV set here in Taiwan.

He is surly, aggressive, rude to his guests, and talks down to them at every opportunity. What he lacks in wit and charm, he makes up for with his gloriously pink suspenders.

As far as I can tell, this guy is basically a Taiwanese Rush Limbaugh who chose to model his look, mannerisms, and set on the King. Go figure.

More Fun Stuff From Asia

2007-01-18T16:44:00.000+08:00

As previously mentioned, Taipei has a very good bus system. Aside from the homicidal tendencies of their drivers, the Taipei Metro system has excellent coverage, clean cabins, and frequent service.

Also, in what I am guessing is an attempt to improve the connection between the transported masses and the people serving them, all of the buses have the name of the person driving them attached on a placard to the back of the bus.

_______________Begin Digression_______________

In case you had not already guessed, folks like Jackie Chan, Stephen Chow and the like weren't born with their English names on their birth certificates. Instead, they have the luxury of choosing their sobriquets by employing a few common methods. In no particular order, they typically are chosen based upon:

Direct Romanization (DR)
i.e. Ang Lee, Zhang Zi Yi, Chow Yun Fat

Phonetic Approximation (PA)
i.e. Kong Fu Zi = Confucius, Chow Sing Chi = Stephen Chow, Li Lianjie = Jet Li

Whatever Frickin' English Word They Happen to See (WTF)
i.e. Battery Su, Pony Lin, Singer Huang, Asahi Lin

There are, of course, more common western names, such as Michael or Andy or Kevin or Vincent, but having lived in Taiwan for the past 15 months or so, I can't help but notice the more unusual ones, typically falling in the latter category.

_______________End Digression_______________

Getting back to the buses...

What you are looking at here is one of my favorite recent examples from the "WTF" category of names.

That's it.

Yes, that was a lot of set up for a relatively minor payoff. What's your point?

This one should go a little faster...

Melanie and I ran across this shower gel at Watson's the other day. At first, I thought it was just another example of not consulting an English speaker before coming up with the product name; however, while combining Man and IQ might seem like clever branding to some and an oxymoron to others, it is certainly not the most unusual thing about this product.

The most bizarre thing has to be the active ingredient - 10W40.

That's right - 10W40.

Where I come from, that's called motor oil, so I am still not sure what they were thinking.

Maybe they had a fortuitous mishap while changing their oil and discovered its miraculous moisturizing properties.

Maybe they felt that Penzoil and Quaker State had left too many markets untapped.

Maybe they felt the best way to appeal to the manly metrosexual was by combining cars and skin care...

Whatever their reasons, the coup de grâce has to be the fact that the back of the bottle explains that this shower gel is produced by a company based out of San Jose, California.

This one is definitely quicker - I promise...

If the Mummy ever decided that the reason his victims always get away is because he simply doesn't have the right footwear, this is what he would buy.

This can't be right...

2007-01-08T17:45:00.000+08:00

China heralds year of the fluorescent green pig

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - Chinese scientists have successfully bred partially green fluorescent pigs which they hope will boost stem cell research, Xinhua news agency said.

A research team at the Northeast Agricultural University in Harbin managed to breed three transgenic pigs by injecting fluorescent green protein into embryonic pigs, Xinhua quoted Professor Liu Zhonghua as saying.

"The mouth, trotters and tongue of the pigs are green under ultraviolet light," said Liu.
Genetic material from jellyfish was injected into the womb of a sow which gave birth to the three pigs 114 days later in Harbin, he said.

China celebrates the start of the Year of the Pig in February.

...I really don't know how to react to this...

Good times grocery shopping

2007-01-08T15:30:00.000+08:00

This one takes a little bit of explaining...

1. The Mandarin word for the number three is pronounced "San".

2. In Taiwan, there is an adjective used to describe a food that is pleasantly chewy (i.e. a gummy candy). This word is pronounced and written as "Q".

3. Many Mandarin speakers, particularly in Taiwan, have trouble pronouncing the "TH" sound. Instead, it usually comes out as "S".

Put it all together, and "3Q" magically becomes "Thank You". Given the relative ease in typing these two characters vs. the complete words in either language and you have the shorthand that nearly all Taiwanese use when sending instant/short messages to each other.

Here, you can see our lovely model is holding a flattened dried squid. This is in our local grocery store - similar to Albertson's in some ways and VERY different in others...

Interesting piece of web art

2006-12-28T04:01:00.000+08:00

I just received this link to a very cool piece of animated art. It is basically a woman being drawn from the inside out, starting with her spine and finishing with a completed clothed woman in repose. Check it out:

http://fcmx.net/vec/get.swf?i=003702

We have also finally met Alton!!

2006-12-24T16:33:00.000+08:00

We had been planning to get together with the Walkers at some point this week for a gift exchange and, more importantly, to also get to meet young Alton for the first time. What we had not counted on was a call from Jared asking if we were available and (upon confirmation) finding out that they were only 10 minutes away...

After 15 minutes of frenzied gift-wrapping, we were finally ready.

For those of you that have known Jared a while, you will recall that he has always been a big boy. Alton Gregory Walker certainly takes after his father in this regard. He is precocious and quite even tempered, but the most obvious thing about him is his size. In particular, after living in Taiwan for the past 14 months and seeing the relatively smaller babies out there, Alton looked more like a 4-year old than a 17-month old.

Alton is a sweet kid, likes to go give high-fives, and absolutely adores Clovis (our little parrotlet). I felt as though I had met him before after seeing all the pictures, but it was definitely much better to finally get to meet him in person.

We finally met Milo!

2006-12-22T18:00:00.000+08:00

We met Milo today for the first time, and he really is a fantastically cute little boy. It is fascinating because he looks more like mommy from most angles, but more like daddy at some others.

We got to see a few baby pictures of Christy from when she was about the same age - had we not known that it was Christy, we would have both sworn it was Milo.

Milo is a boy of a thousand faces (most of them are happy, all of them are cute) so the only real answer is to actually meet him in person.

Buses in Taipei

2006-12-04T16:34:00.003+08:00

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I have the sneaking suspicion that either the bus drivers in Taipei are out to maim their passengers, or they just spend a little too much time playing video games.

With the recent move to the new office in Neihu, I have had the opportunity to ride the bus to the office with increasing frequency. While there are occasionally a few friendly bus drivers that conscientiously operate their piece of heavy machinery in such a way as to minimize the amount of jostling that their passengers undergo, the other 99% seem to really hate the people that keep getting on and off their bus.

I have seen cases where the bus drivers accelerate/decelerate suddenly for no obvious reason, take turns at breakneck speeds, and even start driving off before their passengers have fully boarded/alighted. This is exacerbated by the fact that the drivers have large comfortable seats that have independent shocks to smooth their rides.

The funny thing is that while this would probably never be considered even remotely acceptable in the US (at least on those few occasions when I've had the opportunity to ride the bus), for the most part, this seems to be the norm here in Taipei. Old people literally being thrown into other people's laps doesn't even so much as solicit a dirty look or a sigh.

I'm still trying to figure out if the problem is really with the drivers, or if I've just become too soft after living in the West for most of my life.

One cool thing that I have seen time and time again is a profound respect for the elderly. Every time somebody that looks even somewhat frail gets on the bus, at least one young person - usually the one sitting closest to the entrance - will immediately stand up and offer their seat to them. In the year that we have been living in Taiwan, there has not been a single exception to this phenomenon, which just gives me a warm fuzzy. I have always tried to be courteous and polite, but seeing this sort of behavior makes it seem like it's less of a choice and more of a moral imperative.

Keep it up, Taiwan!
(The courtesy part - not necessarily the crazy bus driver thing)

Achewood comic

2006-11-24T11:08:00.000+08:00

I received this from a friend recently, and it just spoke to me...

Dig it:

Famous People

2006-11-01T00:44:00.000+08:00

I bumped into Jane Goodall at the Grand Hyatt - Taipei earlier this evening. She was in town to promote her Jane Goodall Institute on Sunday, and just happened to be in the executive lounge, where I was waiting for a couple customers for a meeting.

At first, I didn't recognize her - my colleagues in the Taiwan office told me her Chinese name, but it was meaningless to me until I clued into the fact that it was some elderly white woman holding a chimp doll (replete with fake banana) while still managing to look dignified.

My colleague (Glenn) all but dared me to go ask her for an autograph, so I went for it after she finished what appeared to be an interview and headed for the cookies. I introduced myself and was somewhat taken aback when she turned out to be friendly, even to the point of being slightly chatty. She asked me for a card, recruited me for the local branch of her Institute, and then agreed to snap the above photo with me (it's just a camera phone picture, so cut it a little slack).

I have to say that she was quite a nice lady. Having read about her quite a bit back in my Academic Decathlon days (we read "Woman in the Mists" - a book about Diane Fossey, written by Farley Mowat), I felt that I knew something about her, and got a real kick out of the fact that I was actually fortunate enough to bump into her on the 23rd floor of a hotel in Taipei of all places.

Now, if I can just figure out how I can get away with giving interviews holding a stuffed primate...

Baby Boy Jones

2006-10-31T20:57:00.000+08:00

I just had to post something about the fact that Baby Boy Jones (AKA Andre Milo) came into the world this past Sunday, 10/29! We're so happy for the Joneseses and wanted to welcome little Milo to the world!

Very cool NY Times election guide (Flash)

2006-10-28T03:25:00.000+08:00

Follow this link to get access to a pretty neat tool to get a high-level view of the current status in the various contested regions.

Food facts from Asia

2006-10-20T11:04:00.000+08:00

Sign seen in the Taipei airport
The more common word used here would be "congee", which is a rice-based porridge. If the purpose in translating into English was to attract more western clientelle, then I would have to say that they have failed. This conjures images that are more Dickensian than epicurean...

Sign on the door of a McDonalds in Singapore
Feeling too lazy to hop in the car? Can't be bothered to roll off the couch and take a trek through the drive thru? Well...do we have some great news for you!!!

Strong Bull - Fear It or Love it?
This is the local equivalent of Red Bull. The effects are similar except that you don't get the jitters. Also, it tastes better and is easier to chug since it is not carbonated. There was apparently some sort of issue several years back where the bottles were contaminated, resulting in a recall; however, they have since recovered nicely and are supposedly cleaner than ever.

STRONG BULL!!!

More random wackiness from Taipei

2006-10-14T00:36:00.000+08:00

I'm pretty sure that this is a band of some sort. I was just impressed by how naughty the poster was in such a public place (subway station).

11/1/06: Melanie pointed out that I'm on crack and that this photo was actually taken at the airport in Stuttgart, not Taipei...doh!

This is basically a crock pot - except that it's got a name a billion times better than crock pot cuz it's Supa Fine. Turns out this is a fairly common brand out here.
I have this scenario in my head of a tenacious young Taiwanese entrepreneur asking one of their American Negro in Taipei friends for suggestions on what to name his company, and getting this as the response.

Maybe he knew exactly how sweet this name is...maybe he didn't... Not that it matters. The name is tight, son! Supa Fine!

"Extra Fancy" bread sticks...

"Little Negro" branded congee

No - really

I'll take "Things That Won't Sell in the US" for $500, Alex

2006-10-14T00:29:00.000+08:00

Melanie and I were wandering around a local bookstore when we ran across this product. Turns out these are just harmless pieces of colored artist's chalk, although I'm sure that the Department of Homeland Security would put this on their list of carry-on contraband if they ever caught wind of it.

Life's little ironies

2006-09-15T13:30:00.000+08:00

This could explain why many of the Chinese that I meet struggle with English...

Ernest Visits

2006-08-13T18:25:00.000+08:00

Our good friend Ernest happened to be passing through Taiwan on a business trip, so we were able to take him out to see the sights and sounds of Taipei. We tried to cram as much as we could into the day or so that we had, so we visited the Shih Lin night market, Sun Yet Sun Memorial, Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, and a few places in between. It's always great to have friends over, even if it is only for a short amount of time.

Couple quick notes

2006-06-16T13:46:00.000+08:00

Above are a few pictures taken in the Hsin Yi district last week, showing a few examples of this. Note that the second and third pictures involve 12 foot tall inflatable soccer balls that small people can climb into and give their best impersonations of a hamster in an attempt to score a goal. It looks really tempting, but I just don't think they have these in my size...

To the right are a couple pictures taken at the new Eslite bookstore - the largest bookstore in Taiwan. This is probably the best place to buy books for foreigners if you are not too concerned about paying full price. It is a spectacularly large bookstore with an extensive selection of books in many different languages. There are sections on business, education, foreign languages, etc. - pretty much everything but comic books (sorry Nel).

While we were walking around the store last weekend, I came upon a section that is a wonderful lesson of unabashed truth (and lack of subtlety and tact) in advertising.

The Secret to German Self-Discipline

2006-05-29T12:20:00.000+08:00

NOTE: I know many Germans to whom this does not apply, but felt I owed it the following public service for friends planning to visit for the World Cup…

This is a package of typical German toilet paper.

For those that can read German, you will note that nowhere on this packaging do they make any mention of concepts such as ‘softness’, ‘gentle’, etc. This is mostly likely because nowhere within this packaging are these concepts applied.

Over the past several years, whenever I have come to or passed through Germany, I could not help but notice that their toilet paper is significantly harsher than what I had grown accustomed to in the US. At first, I thought that perhaps my American rear was just a wee bit sensitive from the spicy döner I had enjoyed for dinner the previous night. However, after numerous incidents with the paper products encountered across the country, in locations ranging from private homes to airports to excellent hotels, I had to face the inevitable conclusion that was staring me straight in the …er… eye.

Germans are hard asses.

In the US, this is the type of material that would be used to strip the paint off an old car or file away the bars of a prison cell. Unless there is some unusual trend towards pucker exfoliation, I can only assume that Germans consider the ‘softness’ of their TP to be acceptable.

Any culture that lives with this level of pain on a daily basis (twice if they’ve just had some coffee) simply must have a more highly stoic approach to life. Perhaps they feel that suffering is a path toward enlightenment. Perhaps they feel that this is a good way to harden themselves against the burdens of this mortal coil. Perhaps, after years of numbing, they simply feel nothing at all.
Regardless, the moral of this story is that if you ever plan to visit Germany, and you are not entirely certain of your sphincteric fortitude, then bring your own toilet paper.

Context is Everything

2006-05-03T18:51:00.000+08:00

I swear this is true...

BACKGROUND: Singapore is a tiny, sovereign, island nation populated predominately by people with Chinese ancestry.

An ethnic-Chinese Singaporean recently pointed to another asian-looking gentleman and said, "That guy is always walking around talking about how proud he is to be a Honky".

He said this to an older Caucasian, so naturally the white guy figured that he was probably missing something and gently asked for clarification..."Did you just say that the Asian gentleman over there is a 'Honky'?"

The Singaporean replied, "Yep - he is very proud of the fact that he was born and raised in Hong Kong."

Another fine example of how wonderfully screwy the world really is...

The Wonders of Siam

2006-02-20T14:24:00.000+08:00

This is a long overdue post on our trip to Bangkok, Thailand. Back in February of 2006, Melanie and I took a nice extended weekend trip down to visit Bangkok, as well as visit Melanie's friend from Germany, Crissi. Crissi was working on her apprenticeship at Daimler Chrysler, and managed to get a 3 month assignment in Bangkok (how cool is that?), and offered to play guide.

Thailand seems like the sort of place that would always be fun, but the weather is only pleasant in December and January – mainly due to the intense heat and humidity. The food is spectacular, as are the tourist sights and sounds. Check out the palaces and temples. Enjoy the markets and nightclubs. Revel in the food.

This picture was taken during dinner our first night there. On the way to the restaurant, we were treated to tantalizing glimpses into what lay ahead - fascinating fruits and vegetables, hip local dance clubs, dwarf elephants walking down the street with their handler selling sugar cane to feed it, etc. Dinner was fantastic!!

Over the course of 3 days and 3 nights, we were able to take in many of the major sights and sounds of this very bustling city. We visited Wat Phra Kaew, the Grand Palace, Wat Arun, and a ton of other amazing places. Pictured to the left is (I believe) one of the many beautiful areas within the Grand Palace.

Thailand is a predominately Buddhist country, so seeing monks walking around in their robes was a highly regular occurrence. I imagine that it would be fairly easy to become a Buddhist here in much the same way that it would be easy to be a Roman Catholic in Rome. There are just endless temples to learn and worship at, and plenty of opportunities to seek guidance.

I’ve included a few pix here that we took back in February (even then it was >90ºF and >90% RH). We happened to be there during the Bangkok international film festival, so we bumped into one celebrity at dinner. We also took a walk through Patpong (crazier than you can imagine – check out the neon sign) and the Chatuchuk market (also nutty, but more family oriented), but my favorite moments were checking out the architecture and historical areas.

One bit of commentary was the preponderance of old white guys and young Thais (female, shemale, and male) walking hand-on-posterior. It was somewhat unsettling to see how completely public the sex-tourism trade is here. I don't know why, but my prudish American brain would have thought that they would try to at least keep it slightly under wraps.

But enough about the parts that make middle America cringe - on to the touristy stuff!!!

This picture was taken at the site of the largest reclining buddha in Thailand. He's located in a large enclosed space with relatively small doors, which is a good sign that they had to build the buddha first and construct the (amazing) building around him after the buddha was done.

Imperial Palace

Did I mention that it was really hot?

Imperial Palace with Melanie (L) , Fred (C), and Crissi (R)
Nice picture of all three of us together. While I do have faith in humanity, my tourist instincts tell me that handing over your nice new digital camera to a complete stranger is a risky business. Ordinarily, my rule of thumb is that the person that we ask to take our picture has to fit either be small enough to take in a fight or slow enough to outrun. Given the intense heat, I figured it was best to find people fitting both descriptions...ergo so few group pictures.

Klang Ride in the Canals
This part was a lot of fun. For the price of a super-sized value meal, we were able to commission a one hour gondola (AKA Klang) ride through the city. Some of this took us down the major river that runs through the city - Chao Phraya - this was cool, but it did feel pretty darn touristy. To me, it was the rest of the ride that will leave the more lasting impression - the driver took us through a bunch of the backwater (literally) residential neighborhoods, where we were able to get a much better glimpse of how the locals live and play. We saw various configurations of houses on the water, restaurants on the water, kids playing in the water, giant lizards stalking the kids playing in the water, temples by the water, etc. Overall, in my mind, one of the highlights of the entire trip.

Klang Engine - 4 banger on a stick
All of the klangs are thus impelled...fascinating and terrifying at the same time. These things practically flew down the canals at breakneck speeds. If you're ever looking for a quick cure for diarrhea brought on by dining at one of the roadside food stands, then look no further.

Chatuchak Market and Lunch

This place was pretty phenomenal. The Chatuchak market is an enormous quasi-outdoor marketplace where various local vendors peddle their wares out of small- to medium-sized stalls. They sell everything from souvenirs to handicrafts to artwork to food to animals (conveniently located near the food area), etc., etc... We did not have nearly enough time to look around, but we did greatly enjoy what little time we did have.

Celebrity Sighting 1 - Rufus Sewell
We bumped into my boy Ruf (as I like to call him) as we were leaving a fantastic seafood restaurant that my colleague Choong took us to for dinner. I had just watched Dark City a few weeks prior to this trip, so I was able to remember his name. Although Melanie and Crissi were a bit hesitant, I convinced them that it would be okay to go up and say hello. Ruf was actually quite pleasant and jocular - when I asked, "Pardon me, but are you Rufus Sewell?", he responded, "Yes I am! And I'm glad you didn't say 'aren't you that guy from Gladiator'". We chatted for a few moments, I had to challenge him to swords for putting the moves on Melanie, and we ended up compromising by snapping a few photos. Good times were had by all.

Celebrity Sighting 2 - Jacques Chirac
Through some fortunate coincidence, Jacques Chirac (Pres. of France) happened to be in town visiting the leaders of Thailand at the same time that we were visiting, and we were lucky enough to stumble upon the Presidential greeting that he received as his cavalcade drove in from the Parliamentary building. They even gave us little French and Thai flags to wave as they passed by the horseys...

Random Sign in a Restaurant
As near as I can tell, this is a sign for people too drunk to drive home. Either that, or given it's location on the outbound side of the door, it is some sort of commentary on the way you'll feel in a few hours...

Turd Baby

2006-01-06T21:48:00.000+08:00

Saw this in Danshui (northern tip of Taiwan) when Bill and Pia were visiting. Turd Baby is the name of the store, and they sell little toys that come out of those coin-turn machines. We're not entirely sure how the name and the product are related, but when asked about it, all of the people working there were completely clear on the meaning of their store's name. I guess it did have the intended effect of pulling customers into the store, so that probably means it is a good name.

Based on this principle, I suppose this means that we can open up a comic book store called "Cleveland Steamer"...

Toddler Discipline 101

2006-01-06T14:44:00.000+08:00

Found in a Taiwanese book store

Baby misbehaving? Try this proven Taiwanese technique to bring them back in line!

Visitors!

2006-01-06T13:39:00.000+08:00

We were excited to welcome our first guests from the US- Bill and his sister Pia came to visit us for 3 days in January 2006. On the day they arrived (1/3/06), we went to the Shilin nightmarket and started them off with the culinary surprises the island has to offer. We tried things like gelatinous meat balls, fried chicken,......and just made our way through the masses.

The next day (1/4/06), we went to the National Palace Museum to look at great historical artifacts that are collected there from various periods throughout the history of China. We also went up to take a look from the top of the 101 building.

On 1/5/06, we made the trek to the Chiang Kai Shek (AKA Johnny-5) Memorial Hall and had fun poking around the grounds for a while. We tried to take some pictures that didn't exactly come out the way that we would have hoped, but are still cool nonetheless. Here you can see a picture of Bill, Pia and Melanie (looking out from the entrance of the memorial) and Bill and Pia (looking at the entrance). Later on that evening, we decided to walk around the neighborhood a bit and stumbled across some good (albeit sketchy) eats.

On the final day, we went out to the Longshan Temple, which is one of the oldest and largest in Taiwan. This is a really interesting temple, and it is located in a very interesting neighborhood. There is a night-market on the surrounding streets, and the wares that they peddle cater distinctly less to Westerners than the ones that we typically visit. We could tell you more, but that would just ruin the surprise. Let's just say that we suggest making sure that you're up to date on all of your innoculations before becoming too adventurous here.

One the final night, we headed up to Danshui, which is a pretty coastal town on the northern tip of the island. This part of the trip did not go as smoothly as the rest. Basically, it was cold, windy, and rainy, and we got off the bus at the wrong stop - missing the Fisherman's Wharf area by several stops. We slogged our way through a residential area before finding a coastal walkway, and only eventually found the main boardwalk after most things had shut down. This might have been a relatively disastrous last trip had it not been for a very fortuitous discovery of a store with a rather unusual name (see Turd Baby posting), which saved the day. Yay, Turd Baby!!!

Overall, it was a very fun trip. Bill and Pia were our first international visitors that stayed with us for any amount of time, and as such, they had to go through our learning curve on where to take guests and how to get there. Hopefully they still had a good time despite the hiccups. For those of you that are able to come out and visit us, if you find that our tour guide skills are even half-way decent, then you should thank Bill and Pia for blazing the trail.

Happy New Year! Ein Gutes Neues Jahr!

2006-01-02T18:17:00.000+08:00

Christmas in Taiwan was as expected a different experience than before. Then again- the typical commercialization of it was also plainly visible here, especially around the Taipei 101 area with a little Japanese Wonderland and Christmas songs blaring from everywhere....We decided to go there on Christmas day-we are children of our time- and so our Christmas dinner consisted of Indian food, that we found at one of the exquisit foodcourts of the huge shopping malls there. We walked around and just enjoyed watching the lights and listening to Christmas music played by some kids who had their faces painted with European and North American flags.
For New Year we headed out with Fred's cousin Megan(NiuNiu) and her husband Alexander to see the Taipei 101 fireworks. We were only 4 of 200 000 people, mostly teenagers who had the same idea, and so traffic turned out to be pure chaos.We were still stuck in the taxi and miles away from 101 when there were about 15 minutes left till midnight, which left us worried if we would really make it. We decided to get out and make a run for it- us and everybody around us and so this huge mass of people came wobbling towards Taipei 101. And finally, with about 3 minutes left, we were close enough to see the building and we positioned ourselves. Then the countdown started, and there it was, the New Year with a great show of fireworks...so we thought....unfortunately after all the struggle to get there to see the fireworks, they lasted about 2 or 3 minutes, which left probably everybody a bit dumbfounded...but that was it...we tried to move with the mass of people and just went into a cafe to wait for all the people to disperse. Later that night we stopped at a little restaurant to get some food, which showed me that I have adjusted quite a bit to my life here. Why- you might ask- well, I still ate there even after I saw a little cockroach crawling up the walls. I wasn't very hungry after this, but I still ate there...mostly veggies, but still...;) Only shows that one of the things that I have learned is, that oftentimes flexibility and the willingness to move beyond paradigms open up whole new worlds- admittedly both good and bad, but all in all predominantly good. Western hygiene standards usually don't apply here and therefore you just have to make the best of it, otherwise you might miss out on a lot of things. Some of them being the foods at those kinds of places, that still can and usually do taste miraculously delicious..;)and the people who are friendly and generous.

Trip Part 3

2005-12-19T15:55:00.000+08:00

On the second day- Sunday, December 4th- we enjoyed a typical Chinese breakfast at the hotel: watery rice-porrige with several side-dishes, such as preserved cucumbers, "thousand-year-eggs" ( yes, those egges are not boiled, but actually put into some sort of solution ( used to be horse-urine...no joke!!!) to make them congeal), fermented tofu, pork-floss ( dried pork that was pulled apart until the meat feels and looks like dark-sheep- wool) and other goodies. Afterwards, we decided along with 4 other friends to check out the tandems that the hotel offered and made our way over to the much-lauded park nearby! It was a great sunny day and the park really was very nice. It had a lot of lakes and ponds with the usual huge kois in them, which we started feeding right away. We had to head back soon, as we were departing soon for the Spa Hotel.
We stopped at an old village, where we saw a Taiwanese Opera, with impressive make-up artistery. They also showed how to make certain sweets and candy which proved to be a great marketing-strategy: right afterwards people- us included- flocked to buy their products...Towards the evening we finally arrived at the Chiao Hsi Spa, which is a Japanese 5-star Spa and where we enjoyed the GREAT food, delicious deserts and the wonderful hot spring water, which could be enjoyed in 3 locations: outside in the public area, inside in the gender-divided areas or in the privacy of the hotel rooms. The different pools outside were divided according to temperature, which ranged from 39 Degrees Celsius to 43 Degrees Celsius and was great! That really was amazingly relaxing and enjoyable! We were also impressed by the Japanese architecture and designs- straight, clean lines, light rooms, big windows, very functional and wood-based, which gave it warmth and texture. WE LOVED IT!!!
In the evening they had a Taiwanese opera with English subtitles. The next day we had to leave this heavenly resort, but not without strengthening ourselves with a great breakfast! We took off, but stopped soon thereafter to visit the Wufengchi waterfall, which has three tiers and was a very impressive and beautiful sight! After the hike, we returned to the bus and stopped only once when Fred had a soup made with little white fish with black eyes, that looked like worms and that were staring at him while he scooped away...brrrrr...I am not that thoughened yet...;) And so in the evening we arrived in Taipei after an interesting, yet relaxing weekend with our friends from Synaptics.

Trip - Part 2

2005-12-03T23:58:00.000+08:00

After leaving the CKS house, we headed over to our hotel to check in for the evening. The hotel was nice enough, and had a killer view of this fascinating park across the way (more on this later).

Following dinner, some of us headed over to the night market, which is a Taiwanese phenomenon that everybody should experience at least once in their lives. Sooner or later, Melanie and I plan to head down and document a visit with photos for a blog post. While it is possible to express some of the experience in words, and perhaps still more in pictures, without the diverse smells, the dichotomy of delightful and alarming tastes, and the general sense of claustrophobia that go along with it, nothing short of a visit really captures the adventure.

We wandered around a bit, filling our already distended bellies well beyond their capacity, and still we pressed on. We found some stores with interesting merchandise that probably wouldn't go over so well in Western countries (no - that's not the actual buddhist symbol - white power!). We ended up playing one of those basket shooting games, where you're supposed to get as many buckets as possible in a preset amount of time. Glenn's brother challenged me to a match, and naturally beat me soundly. Afterward, we stepped back and let some of the local kids take their turn. Talk about embarassing - these kids made more basket in the first 30 seconds then either one of us made in our two games combined. I wish I had caught a video of this demonstration of mastery of a game - they just never missed!

Following our humbling, we moved on to a section where we played some carnival games, such as the ring toss, balloon shooting, etc.; Melanie won us all prizes with her deadeye accuracy (remind me to never piss this woman off - at least when she's armed). Pictured here are (left to right) Melanie, Vanessa (Glenn's girlfriend) Glenn, Glenn's brother's girlfriend, and Glenn's brother.

Truly, a good time was had by all.

Taiwan Company Trip - Part 1

2005-12-03T12:35:00.000+08:00

This was a really fun trip. It is apparently common within Taiwan for companies to take their employees on a company outing once a year - usually towards the end of the summer - and the Synaptics Taiwan branch office is no exception.

This year's trip was to the northern area of the east coast of Taiwan (see picture on the right). Synaptics chartered a tour bus for this trip, and they did a really nice job of taking us down the scenic coastal route and stopping every hour or two along the way.

There were some spectacular views from the bus of the East coast. Pictured to the right is one of the ones we snapped from the bus that gives a nice typical view - here, you can see the very mountainous coastline with dramatic rocks jutting out of the water and gorgeous green peaks all around. Most of the drive looked this way, which made it really hard to sleep despite the fact that Melanie and I combined for a total 4 hours of sleep the night before we left - cest la vie.

After a couple hours of driving down the coast, we started ducking into the valleys to the West of the coast. We stopped for lunch at a place called 牛鬥鱒魚大餐午餐, where we had a nice lunch at a pastoral stop that had a alarmingly well stocked Koi pond. Here are a couple photos.

After lunch, we continued to drive into the valley and came across a pretty neat sight. Pictured here is a river bed the likes of which I have never seen before (which really isn't saying a whole lot). As you can see, this is an INCREDIBLY broad channel cut by the water even though the flow shown in this picture (far left) is scarcely more than a trickle. The reason for this disparity is an excellent illustration of the power of the typhoons that come through here - this mild-mannered stream becomes a raging river whenever one of nature's monster storms comes blowing through.

...But back to the tour...

We then proceeded to an area called "棲蘭森林遊樂區~蔣公行館, 森林浴, 觀景涼亭"...I don't know what this means either, but it sure is a pretty place. This used to be the area surrounding one of Chiang Kai Shek's country homes. Most of this part of the tour was in Chinese, and I am pretty much illiterate (sigh) so I don't know all of the details; however, this place apparently has some sort of historical significance in the recent history of Taiwan.

Personally, I thought the most interesting part of this portion of the tour had to do with the backyard. There is a gorgeous trail that winds its way through the mountain behind the house. It takes about 45-60 minutes to hike the whole thing, mainly because there are some pretty steep steps to climb. Here you can see a few photos of the scenery.

Here is a nice little bridge where we rested for a little while, as well as a rock that hopefully doesn't say anything bad about Melanie. In the photo on the left are seated (from left to right) Vincent, Kevin, Melanie, Vivian, and David.

We also caught a nice shot of Melanie here in the little garden in front of the house. We took this picture after the hike and a nice cup of tea at the cafe near the house. This was right at sunset, and although the weather was a bit overcast, it still capped off a very pleasant day.

To the left is a picture with what could possibly be the world's cutest baby - Yang Yang. I'll go out on a limb on this one and say that Melanie's clock started going off like a klaxon when we met this little guy. I must admit that he was pretty darn cute, but there must be 100 little devils for a baby like Yang Yang, so pragmatism wins out (for now).

Exact location of the flat

2005-11-27T13:22:00.000+08:00

For those of you that use some sort of mapping service, here are the coordinates of our flat here in Taipei:

Latitude: 25º 04’ 12.26” N
Longitude: 121º 36’ 30.61” E
Elevation: 74 ft

Lay's International chip flavors

2005-11-21T16:59:00.000+08:00

Hawaii Red Pepper and Texas Grilled BBQ
...normal so far...

American Classic and Swiss Cheese
...still pretty ordinary...

Hokkaido Grilled Crab and Kyushu Seaweed
Don't know about the seaweed yet, but the crab is actually pretty good

Food fun

2005-11-21T16:49:00.000+08:00

Chocolate cheese

For cleaner emissions

Not really food, but...
The English on the back claims this is "Darlie Toothpaste", but I remember back when I was a child, this product was called "Darkie" and Sambo had a gleaming mouthful of pearly whites. Besides, the two Chinese words above the distinguished gentleman still read "Black Man".
I'm going to start checking to see if they have Negro Mouthwash or Kill Whitey Dental Floss.
...oh, and for the record, this is Whitening toothpaste...

Read it backwards.

That's good enough for me

No shame at all

2005-11-19T22:46:00.000+08:00

Saw this ad down in the MRT (Taipei subway)

Taxis in Taipei

2005-11-13T00:02:00.000+08:00

First, a quick haiku...

Taxi drivers ask me
Why do you speak my language?
I often tell lies

We don't have a car here in Taiwan, so I often take a taxi to and from the office. In order to ensure that the taxi driver takes me on the most direct route to minimize the fare, I often try to bust out with my best Mandarin so that they suspect that I might just perhaps be a local. This is truly a double-edged sword because my Mandarin is good enough to make them wonder how the hell I learned it so well. When Melanie and I lived here for a few months back in 2000, I took taxis to work far more often and as a result was subjected to nearly daily questions as to how I picked it up.

At first, I would tell the story of how my mother is Chinese and my grandmother (who doesn't speak a word of English) came to live with us for a few years when I was a teenager, forcing me to speak more often - thereby giving me the authentic mainland Chinese accent I have today. Usually, this story leads to more questions about my family, my language skills, how long I've lived in Taiwan, whether or not I've been to the mainland, etc., which is all fine and dandy when I'm in a chatty mood, but just plain invasive when I'm in a pissy one.

One day, during the World Cup back in 2000, a taxi driver asked me if I was an athlete. I'm not quite sure what possessed me at that moment, but I decided to roll with it and told him that I was indeed an athlete. I figured that being a relatively tall, apparently black man in Taiwan gave me a distinct advantage in pulling this little lie off. I went on to tell him that I played for the US National team, but due to a freak training accident, I was relegated to scouting duties in Asia. He bought it hook, line, and sinker and I think he might have even been tempted to ask me for my autograph (I admit I was a little disappointed that he didn't).

After that, I developed a taste for telling outlandish lies and seeing what the cabbies would believe. At first, I stuck to claiming to be an athlete for various sports - MLS fullback, NBA point guard and even NHL goalie, but then even those stories started to get boring so I switched to juicier fare. I was a banker, a hip-hop artist, a rock star, an architect and all sorts of other occupations, although I'm proudest of the time when I convinced a guy that I was an Australian spy sent to keep tabs on the cross-straits relations between China and Taiwan.

Eventually, I left Taiwan with a proud sense of accomplishment, both professionally as well as in the role of improvisational storyteller. I really didn't have much use for telling my little fibs at that point and ultimately fell out of practice...mostly...

That brings us to the present. I've taken taxis quite a few times since arriving in Taipei, and I have thus far invariably told the truth behind my Chinese skills. Today, on the ride back home, I was suddenly given reason to once again consider going back to my prevaricating ways.

I got into the cab this evening expecting an uneventful ride home. I was a little skittish about the taxi driver striking up a conversation with me since I was in slightly foul spirits, but I wanted to get home quickly so I took the plunge and gave him my destination with a good accent. My fears were immediately realized when he started asking me why I spoke Mandarin. I gave him the shortest possible story I could (half-Chinese...nuff said) in the hopes he'd let it drop...but he wouldn't....

As we drove the 20 minutes to the flat, he started to surreptitiously draw me into a conversation. First, he asked if I was in high-tech...then asked if I came with my wife...then he asked if my parents were still in the US...then he asked how long I'd been living in Taiwan...all the usual questions. At that point, he felt he had enough information to start drawing conclusions, and made a comment on how our household here in Taiwan had so many continents represented - Asia, Europe, Africa...

...wait a second...

I'm an American.

Sure, but where's your dad from?

Mississippi.

Isn't his family from Africa?

No - they're also from Mississippi.

Really? You're a bit dark.

Yeah. I know. But my dad's family has lived in the US for countless generations.

Oh. I get it. So your wife is from Germany, your mother is from Taiwan, and you're from the US with African ancestors.

Not exactly. Like I said - it's been hundreds of years. It doesn't really count any more. We have no idea where our family is from in Africa, but we do know they've lived in Mississippi for quite a while. We're Americans.

Have you ever been to Africa?

No.

I wish I could say that this was where the conversation ended, but we came back around this way one more time before we got to the house.

Ever wanted to go to Africa?

Yep. Turn left here...

I think it's time to start telling lies again...

Found this great seafood restaurant near our house

2005-11-10T21:00:00.000+08:00

You pick the seafood you want and the style you want it cooked, and they bring it out to you a few minutes later. There's really no good way to describe this in words, so you'll just have to come visit us to find out why we think this is so tasty.

This is a passion fruit

2005-11-08T18:30:00.000+08:00

These are SOOOOOO good

Sign observed in business section of Hong Kong

2005-11-07T13:00:00.000+08:00

Would never have occurred to either of us to try...

Big Ole Bowl O' Noodles

2005-10-30T18:00:00.000+08:00

We went and had dinner at the 101 food court - Lonely Planet called this the best that they'd ever seen. Here's a nighttime picture taken on the way back to our hotel.

The food court is located in the lower basement level of the mall, which shares a foundation with the main tower. There are probably hundreds of restaurants and shops down there serving all varieties of food, from authentic asian to middle eastern to US fast food. We wandered around a bit and ended up going with a Hong Kong specialty - "A Kuan" milk noodles. The broth is made with real milk - a bonus for those of us that are lactose intolerant - and while highly surreal, is also very tasty.

View from Agora hotel in Taipei

2005-10-30T01:05:00.000+08:00

Arrived in Taiwan on 10/22/05 and moved into the Agora Garden Hotel in Taipei - VERY nice digs. One of the best parts of staying here was the fantastic location. We were fortunate enough to be just a few (admittedly large) blocks away from the Taipei 101. Here are some shots of the hotel:

Picture from the "Pegasus Garden" in the back

Front of the hotel

Not really sure what I was thinking...probably something between Colossus of Rhodes and constipation

Pegasus Gardens

Visit to Niu Niu's place

2005-10-29T20:00:00.000+08:00

We went over and visited Niu Niu (AKA Megan) and Jen Hsun (AKA Alexander) at their place in Neihu. Through some bizarre coincidence, we managed, without even really trying, to find a place that is about 0.5km away from theirs. Even odder is the fact that they just opened up their new office about 3 blocks away from our place. We went over one night to visit and get a tour of their house, which is pretty darn snazzy.

Pictured here are Fred and Niu Niu (cousin from 2nd aunt) and the three dogs hanging out on the couch.

Dinner with Henry

2005-10-28T22:30:00.000+08:00

Henry Chiu, one of our Directors of Sales, came to Taiwan and invited the whole team out for a nice dinner. This was taken at an upscale Japanese restaurant, and the food was fan-freaking-tastic.

From left to right, we have Howard, Henry, Vincent, Kelly, Andy, Glenn, Vanessa, Melanie, and Fred.

Dinner with Grandfather

2005-10-28T11:00:00.000+08:00

We had a nice dinner in Shi Men Ding with Grandpa Ai before he left for the US. He gave Melanie a really nice 18 year old commemorative coin.